Hey my fiance is trying to get into the 309 program in Arkansas, which is(to the best of my understanding) where you stay at a local jail and work in the community during the day to relieve overcrowding in the prisons. He is a certified welder. Anyone know much about the 309 and how difficult it is to get in?? I called the sheriff's dept. in the county he was convicted in but so far no word back.:confused:

Hey honey bee! Did you get any responses to your 309 question? I am in the same boat. My fiancee is in Arkansas and wants to go to a 309 program too. He gave me the names of the Sheriffs in the counties he is interested in going to and I sent them each a letter asking them to consider him but so far no word. Let me know what you have found out. Maybe we can help each other!
Chaps

My husband was in the 309 program a while ago in Paragould. Is he eligable for the program? He has to be ticket free, non violent offender. Does he have a good relationship with his counselor. The key to getting into those programs is have someone from administration on your side or pay the inmate who processes the paperwork to "ensure" he gets picked.

From the ADC handbook:
Under the Act 309 program, eligible ADC inmates are housed in certain county or city jails for work purposes. Participating counties and cities request inmates by skill and the inmates are not paid for their work. Eligibility requirements include a good disciplinary record, at least six month in the ADC system after initial assessment and no convictions for capital murder, first degree murder, sexual offenses or stalking. If the inmate is more than 30 months from parole eligibility, the sheriff or chief of police in the county of conviction must approve the inmate's participation in the program.

hey all! I almost forgot about this post, yes he did get into the 309 back in July and he loved it!! He had so much freedom as copared to before, he could call me any time day or night and i could call him, they could order takeout they could walk all around the block where they were staying and hang out basically unsupervised, wear thier own clothes, smoke(i didn't like that part of course), and when i went to see him i could stay all day unsupervised:) in fact i didn't see one correction officer or police officer the whole time i was there! There were about ten guys staying there in individual beds they were allowed to have their own tv's, vcr's, rent movies and also could wash police cars and polish boots to earn money. This is amazing compared to what normal prisoners are having to deal with in regular pop. Sadly a month or so ago one of the guys there tryed to get him and some others in trouble by saying they were doing drugs. So they moved him back to prison until his drug test came back. By the way it was clean! So he is still a class 1a in good standing now that they know the drug using didn't happen but he will still have to reapply again to get back in the program since he was moved.