Andrick Barron’s smile kept breaking free, even behind bars.
The 21-year-old and others in jailhouse uniforms walked with what looked like practiced formality, past onlookers, to the front of a room at the Cobb County Detention Facility as graduation procession music played.
A big sheet cake on a side table had one word written in icing: “Congratulations.” Dignitaries were introduced.
Barron’s attempts at solemnity kept morphing into a grin. He and eight others, in jail awaiting trials, celebrated a graduation of sorts this week: Each had earned a GED, the equivalent of a high school diploma, while locked up.
The hope of officials is that the program, like those offered in other area jails, will better prepare inmates to get work and stay out of trouble once they are released, particularly when paired with other educational programs offered, such as certifications in welding or building trades.
“You are a product of circumstances,” Sheriff Craig Owens told the graduates. “but you are a product also of your decisions. And choosing to get your GED was one of the best decisions.”
Barron never finished high school. His educational undertakings were cut short by his criminal ones. In the 10th grade, the Lawrenceville resident was behind bars, part of a string of incarcerations that he said began when he was about 13.
He’s in jail now awaiting prosecution on seven charges, most of them felonies, charges that, if he is found guilty, could keep him in confinement for years. Still, he smiled.
“It’s something I really wanted to do,” he said of earning the GED, which involved group classes at the detention center and studying before taking and passing tests on math, science, social studies and English.
“This is going to help me when I get out,” he said.
Credit: NATRICE MILLER
Credit: NATRICE MILLER
No family members of the graduates attended the ceremony Tuesday. But Barron said he had called his father earlier to share the news.
“My dad was happy that I’m trying to change my ways.”
Barron said he’d like to get two college degrees, one in business and another in project management, to help him start his own company. “I want to prove everybody wrong.”
Just over half of adult inmates serving sentences in Georgia state prisons never earned a high school degree or GED, at least among those who reported their educational attainment, according to a report last year by the state Department of Corrections. At the Cobb Detention Facility, which is housing more than 2,000 inmates, the educational history isn’t available for many detainees. Among those for whom it is, three-fourths at least finished high school. Still, more than 300 didn’t.
Former inmates with felonies can have a tough time landing a job, and it only becomes harder without at least the equivalent of a high school diploma.
Rachel Pilgrim, 38, already has served a four-year stint in prison. Much of that time she just sat and played cards, she said. Now, she’s in the Cobb jail facing new charges. But this time, she was encouraged to take part in the voluntary GED program and rushed to do so.
“I’ve done nothing but bad and ended up in the same place,” she said. “Maybe now, doing something good, I won’t come back.”
She hopes it might help in staying employed when she gets out. “I’ve always had to lie on applications, like ‘Yeah, I got a GED,’ and wait for it to backfire on me. But now I don’t have to do that.”
A total of 13 inmates have received GEDs since the Cobb facility’s GED Training Center opened in March. Currently, another 23 are in the process of attaining the credentials.
Some of Tuesday’s graduates took part in the program to get a break from monotonous days and the broader jail population or to use “dead time” to better themselves. One inmate saw it as a step toward eventually getting a community college degree or a license to drive tractor trailers.
Another talked about how happy his oldest daughter, now in college, was to hear her dad had earned his GED.
Another, Samuel Santos, said when he dropped out of 10th grade he hadn’t realized the significant advantages he was giving up along with a high school degree. It prevented him from getting real estate agent and construction licenses, he said. Those would have enabled him to launch a business buying, rehabbing and selling homes, he said.
Now, he’s also hoping a GED eventually will help him provide for his 16-month-old daughter. And maybe one day she’ll be inspired by the idea that her father aimed for more, which might push her to expect more for herself.
Santos recently told his own dad that he had earned a GED. “He was like, ‘OK. That’s your first step. Now you have more to go.’”
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I have more to go. This is not my last step.’”
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