Concrete poured last week to start the buildout of a Construction Facility adjacent to the Warren County Jail.
County Executive Terry Bell said he hopes to have construction classes for inmates started by summer. Bell said he hopes they could use the incarceration period to get inmates trained for a career.
“A lot of them people don’t realize having nowhere to go,” Bell said. “And if they’re in there, and of course, drugs is a big issue. But if they’re in there on that charge and they’ve been selling drugs and they serve their sentence, and then you just take them and drop them out in society, some of them have nowhere to go and no family or friends except the people they were selling drugs for. They go right back into the same thing, and then quick as they get caught, they’re back in the jail again, costing taxpayers huge amounts of money.”
Bell said a welding program has already gotten off to a successful start. Bell said they are close to graduating the first class in that program.
The program will train inmates on various areas of construction. The facility will provide classroom and workshop space for hands-on learning. The programs being funded through a grant to Warren County.