Atlanta’s new Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms just launched a new jail to jobs re-entry program. After just 100 days in office under her belt, she is already making big moves to help prison inmates find employment after their release.
According to CBS46, the program is called PAT: Preparing Adult Offenders Through Treatment, Therapy and Training, and it allows non-violent state prisoners to get vocational training while they are behind bars. They even have opportunities to start their new jobs before they are released.
“These are city employees who will have benefits and more importantly they’ll have a paycheck so what does that mean? That means while they’re incarcerated they can start paying child support, while they’re incarcerated they can start paying rent, but most importantly when they’re released they’ll still be city employees,” Mayor Lance Bottoms shared.
“These men have an opportunity not just for a job but this is a career pathway,” she added.
The mayor went on to share that this new program is close to her heart because her father suffered with opioid addiction and he was also incarcerated. “The struggles that my dad had and his imprisonment and the impact it had on my and my brothers and sisters, and also on our family as a whole as I shared throughout the course of the campaign, it really was the death of our family,” she said.
The first 8 participants had any opportunity to meet the mayor and have already started working for the city’s Watershed Department!
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