Sunday, July 16, 2006

As an option to prison, center for nonviolent offenders is itself filled up / Chronicle-Telegram, 16 Jul 2006

http://www.chroniclet.com/Daily%20Pages/071606head10.html
Adam Wrigh
"It could be a scene from any college, clusters of three or four students trying to make their few minutes of break last a lifetime. But as nice as the surroundings are, these men don’t kid themselves about why they’re there. “This place helped me open myself up. It got the sickness out of me that was eating me up,” said 32-year-old Larry McCoy, a former Lorain resident and one of 56 men receiving treatment at the Lorain-Medina Community Based Correctional Facility.The men gathered before class wearing T-shirts and jeans and talked about the rigors of education, girlfriends and whether all this hard work is worth it. Built in 1997 and located in Elyria, the facility is one of 18 CBCFs in Ohio. The centers are designed to change the way non-violent offenders think so they can become productive members of society instead of going to prison."