HARTSVILLE, SC (WBTW) – The Hartsville Police Department Safe Communities Action Team is hosting a notification session to prevent felons from becoming re-offenders.
The session is designed for felons who are currently on probation. The goal is to help show them that they can get back into the working world and begin to make healthy lifestyle choices, although they have committed crimes in the past.
“The majority of the ones who we select, they are pretty much all on probation because those are the ones we are trying to help,” says Lt. Tenyonde Richardson with the Safe Communities Action Team. “Those are the ones who may have the idea that they can’t really do anything, can’t find a job, or can’t do anything positive in their lives, and we just want to help them help themselves.”
The participants will be offered counseling, and job training and placement.
“That’s what the main thing is, them getting back out into the workforce and making a better life for them and their families,” said Lt. Richardson.
The program has helped turn the lives of several people around, by helping them receive jobs and even sending some of the offenders to school.
“After I went to safe communities, I signed on as a temp with the City of Hartsville, and through them, I did good in my work and they sent me to school to get my CDL,” explains program participant Jerod Williams.”Sometime after they sent me to school, I got hired on full-time working with the sanitation department.”
The event takes place Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at Hartsville City Hall.
