MCKINNEY, Texas — Sheriffs will tell you, as Sheriff Jim Skinner did on Wednesday in Collin County, that their first job is public safety: catching and locking up the bad guys who deserve it. The next task, however, is returning those inmates to society, after their time served, as better citizens than when they went in.
As of this week, the sheriff says those efforts will be getting some help.
The Collin County Sheriff's Office is the first in Texas to join a national program called IGNITE: Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education. Created by Sheriff Christopher Swanson in Genessee County, Michigan in 2020, and facilitated by The National Sheriffs' Association, the program offers what county and city jails often lack: education, job training and life-skills classes to inmates.
"For seven months and three weeks," Collin County inmate Darius Bradford said when asked how long he'd been in jail on a burglary conviction. And, while admitting he deserves the sentence he received, he said all that time comes with another cost.
"See there's a lot of us in here, we don't have hope," Bradford said. "We lose hope once we walk through these doors."
"These inmates have to do the work themselves," Skinner said to an assembled group of law enforcement officers inside the county jail, along with Bradford and several other inmates seated in the back row. "We have to show them the path and we have to show them that there's hope," he said while announcing Collin County's adoption of the education program.
IGNITE brings education programs that you might find in state prisons to the county level. Collin County alone averages more than 1,000 in its jail population every day.
"The commitment to IGNITE is not to advocate for someone who did wrong," Swanson said at the Collin County event. Both he and Skinner made it clear they will remain tough on crime and mete out the sentences that judges and juries confer. "But the commitment of IGNITE is to change a culture so they never come back."
An offer of redemption has proven successful at his jails in Flint, Michigan Swanson said. He says implementation of the education programs there have led to less violence inside jails, less conflict and less recidivism. The National Sheriffs' Association says that studies have shown inmates released back into society often return to jail because of a lack of education, lack of specialized skills, and low family support.
"We should be teaching people skills that when they leave here they have the confidence and the ability to manage their own resources," said Skinner.
"But to give the opportunity for individuals locked up the constructive education to never come back, everybody wins," added Swanson.
Bradford's goal is to serve his time and then serve his community by seeking college degrees in ministry.
"This program feels to me like it will give us hope. It will give us a chance to want to do better."
In June 2023, Bradford was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of Burglary of a Habitation with Intent to Commit Invasive Visual Recording.
"Initially, we plan to offer educational courses, including ones to help a person complete a GED, and adult-education classes ranging from literacy skills to American Sign Language to budgeting and money-management skills," said Skinner. "On the job front, we plan to offer sets of short, connected classes on various skills, such as food service, commercial driving, and barber skills.
"We're working to open a licensed barber college, and we will integrate some of our IGNITE job training with our current bee-keeping program that is part of our inmate farming operation. Because the average length of a person's stay in county jail is much shorter than, say, prison, a key challenge is to design meaningful, progressive classes that together can add up to new skills or a new credential. I am confident that our programs staff and detention officers will help people and do great things through IGNITE."