On any given day, there are about 730 inmates serving time at the Monroe County Jail.
Sheriff Todd Baxter is convinced that any number of them can succeed in life with the right intervention and support.
"We've been incarcerating and jailing people the same way for decades," Baxter said, "and there's people with potential inside that jail that we can take advantage of and see if we can get them on the right path to life and be good neighbors of ours."
About a month ago, a group of seven incarcerated men were selected to take part in a pilot program designed to set them up for success.
The group is the first cohort to be enrolled in the Andrew P. Meloni Strategic Training Advancing Re-entry Academy, or the Meloni STAR Academy for short. It's located at 750 East Henrietta Road and it was, until now, known as the Monroe Correctional Facility.
The facility was renovated in preparation for the launch of the initiative. The interior changes, which make the space look more like a residential or dormitory-style unit, are based on the theory that a person's environment influences their self-perception.
The participants were chosen based on their eligibility, which includes a minimum six-month jail sentence, and on their willingness to work hard.
"We let them know the expectations," Baxter said. "We let them know they'd be working six days a week, that they'd be working before sunup and working well after dinnertime those six days a week, and with that, we promised them stability when they leave the jail."
More than two dozen government agencies, health organizations, and faith-based and community groups have signed up to provide training for the participants. They include Alcoholics Anonymous, Monroe Community College, the county's office of workforce development, ROCovery Fitness, URMC Behavioral Health, and 23 others.
The providers will offer services including spiritual and addiction counseling, vocational training, and life skills education and support. Baxter said the menu of services will be tailor-made depending on the specific needs of the individual participant.
He said he'll know two years from now whether the program was successful if the people taking part in it are reintegrated with their families and have overcome the obstacles they faced before they were arrested.
"For example," Baxter explained, "they owed child support; they didn't have a New York state driver's license and they owned fines; they didn't have a good, sustainable job. Those are barriers. When they leave jail, and those things are still on top of them, that's a burden that's probably going to end up helping them get them back in jail."
Baxter said for those, like him, who want to see New York state's recently enacted bail reform laws repealed, the STAR Academy could represent a silver lining to the controversial laws, which eliminate cash bail for most nonviolent crimes and misdemeanors.
"We may end up with more sentenced inmates inside the jail," he said, "which gives us an opportunity to know how long they're going to be with us, and we can put them in these cohort models as opposed to just housing them downtown and wondering if they're going to be with us two days, two weeks, or a year waiting for a trial."
Each cohort of STAR participants will be in the program for six months, and a new cohort will be added every three months. Incarcerated women will be eligible by this summer.
The current STAR initiative is not costing taxpayers any additional money, according to the sheriff. He said $70,000 in funding came from jail commissary sales and charges paid by inmates to make phone calls.
If the program proves to be successful, Baxter wants to expand it.
But that would require long-term funding. Baxter said he's already had preliminary meetings with representatives from the New York State Regional Economic Development Council and the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative to explain the effort and its potential to change lives.
"Because this fulfills every tenet of poverty in the anti-poverty push, and every gentleman who is in this program is probably in poverty," Baxter said.
STAR Academy participants agreed to be tracked for up to two years so the Sheriff's Office can determine whether their participation in the program was successful.
