Recently paroled prison inmates flocking back to Santa Barbara County upon release will soon have a designated reporting place.
The county’s two reporting centers are scheduled to open on July 1. To prepare the public for the occasion, the Sheriff’s Department is holding an informational meeting on June 22 at 6 p.m. in the Santa Maria City Council Chambers at 110 E. Cook St.
Sheriff Bill Brown and Community Solutions, Inc.—the Connecticut-based nonprofit contracted to run the centers—are scheduled to make presentations. Representatives from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will also be available to answer questions from the audience.
The reporting center will be located not far from
City Hall, in an office at 1775 S. McClelland St. The
center will help former inmates who were arrested in the county and then released back into the region after doing time. According to the Sheriff’s Department,
the center can accommodate up to 50 clients at any given time. Those clients will receive services to help them reenter society, including job readiness training, parenting and substance abuse classes, and other life skills training.
The Sheriff’s Department said in a release to the media it believes the centers will help ease county jail overcrowding by limiting the number of people sent back to jail for new offenses.
For more information about the center or the meeting, call the Sheriff’s Department at 681-4100.
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This article appears in Jun 17-24, 2010.