As Rosalinda Leach approached the podium, she adjusted her glasses and eyed the audience — mostly women dressed in head-to-toe blue or donning maroon caps and gowns.
“No pressure, right?” she quipped.
These women were her classmates. And her fellow inmates.
On Wednesday morning, they were celebrating a milestone: earning an educational degree from inside the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in Las Vegas. Twenty-one women received high school diplomas, a dozen earned high school equivalency degrees and others acquired vocational certificates. One female inmate even received her bachelor’s degree in business administration from California Coast University.
“Reaching our goal of graduating was far from easy,” Leach, 28, said, beginning her speech. “We are grateful to our teachers for the patience, guidance and support they all showed us … When we came to school, we were treated as students — not inmates.”
For Leach, the path to a high school diploma started as a distraction. She wanted something to occupy her time, keep her mind from drifting to the past. She enrolled in algebra and earned good grades, so she picked up more classes, unearthing a passion for history in the process.
Six months and five and a half credits later, she was writing the graduation speech for the class of 2016.
Leach credits her faith — and her desire to be a good role model for her 3-year-old son — for getting her to this point. Gone are the days of stealing cars to feed her crystal methamphetamine addiction, she said.
“I don’t want my son to view me as someone who lost it all and stayed on the floor,” she said.
Now, Leach sets reasonable goals, like becoming a tutor while in prison and obtaining a college degree post-release. She’s eligible for parole next May.
If all goes as planned, Leach will achieve another unspoken goal, which is not winding up back in custody. As far as prison officials are concerned, that’s why education programs for inmates are so crucial: They provide inmates an opportunity to better themselves and, consequently, improve the community by reducing recidivism.
A 2013 RAND Corporation study found that inmates who participate in correctional education programs are 43 percent less likely to return to prison than those who do not. Similarly, employment odds were higher as well.
The Clark County School District provides courses for inmates seeking a GED, high school diploma and associate degrees at Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center, an all-custody facility in northeast Las Vegas. The prison houses about 925 to 950 females whose crimes vary in severity.
The program exemplifies the Nevada Department of Correction’s new mission and vision statements, which were unveiled Tuesday and place a heavy emphasis on rehabilitation efforts as well as safety. Next month, the correctional center is debuting a cosmetology program that will grant practicing licenses to those who pass.
“The women that are in our facilities — a lot of them do want to succeed,” said department Director James Dzurenda, who started last month following the resignation of former director Greg Cox. “Not all are problems to society.”
Dzurenda urged the graduates to encourage their fellow inmates to pursue learning opportunities. “Education can provide doors you never had in the past,” he told them.
That’s already evident to Leach, who concluded her commencement remarks with a shout-out to her English teacher.
“(The) English reference packet really came in handy while writing this speech,” she said.
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