Get a Job, Stay Out of Jail

During a discussion about various reform efforts now underway in the county’s criminal justice system, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown highlighted a $2.49 million federal grant his department just secured — along with the county’s Workforce Development Board — to provide job training to County Jail inmates and to offer employers subsidies to hire them. Brown said the program would partner with both Santa Barbara City and Allan Hancock colleges, not to mention the Good Samaritan Homeless Shelter out of Lompoc.

Brown said the county’s grant application approval was one of 28 such recipients nationwide. He told the supervisors that released inmates need five skills not to re-offend. The first was having a job skill. Another, he said, was having a job. This program, he stated, would provide both of these. (The other three, he said, was a place to live, anger management, and addiction treatment.)