Bob Cuddy: County should clue Paso in on re-entry plans

ou might think some government leader could sashay up from the county seat

in San Luis Obispo and chat with the mayor of Paso Robles, especially about matters that affect the city.

Heck, the county could even send the mayor an e-mail or give him a call.

But if you thought they’d share information that way on future plans for the soon-to-be-closed youth correctional facility in Paso, you’d be wrong.

“I haven’t heard from anybody,” Mayor Frank Mecham said Thursday. “There’s a big void.”

What Mecham would like to hear about is a nascent plan to “re-purpose” the El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility.

“Re-purpose,” a word only a bureaucrat could love, means to use a place for something different. In this case, that would be to use the facility as a site for the state’s program to help prisoners re-enter society.

Under the 2007 Public Safety and Offender Rehabilitation Services Act, inmates would spend their last year before release receiving job training, education, and drug and alcohol counseling.

The state is looking for locations to carry this out, and El Paso de Robles, northeast of the city near the airport, caught its eye.

Mecham isn’t sure whether the re-entry program is a good idea because nobody has provided him with the details. He’s miffed about that.

“We really don’t even know what this means—the numbers, the types of people” that would be incarcerated there.

Mecham thinks an informed citizenry would be a good idea.

I have to go along with the mayor on that one.

When Mecham does get the details—and he is boning up now, mostly by his lonesome, as well as speaking with the warden of the California Men’s Colony—he may find good reasons to support re-entry.

The idea, said Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Rob Reid, is to cut down on recidivism.

The old paradigm for prisoner released, Reid said, is “$200 and a bus ticket.”

With rehabilitation, the community is — in theory — getting a workplace-ready citizen rather than an ex-con with no skills.

With job training, these folks seem to me less of a threat to commit a crime that will send them back to the Big House, especially when they are a year away from release.

Another incentive: For counties that cooperate with the state rehabilitation program, the state is making available up to $25 million in jail construction money. San Luis Obispo County, which wants to build a $40 million women’s jail, would like some of that money.

OK, that last one is a bribe. But let’s not get all prissy about it.

Finally—and this is big — using El Paso de Robles to rehab incipient parolees would create possibly hundreds of jobs, which could offset the job losses from the youth facility closure.

The state’s plan is in its early stages and nothing is certain.

But one thing seems likely: the state could “re-purpose” El Paso de Robles.

If so, the city should be part of those discussions. If this is done right, it could bring jobs and income.

I wonder what Paso Robles thinks about it? Let’s give them the information and find out.