DeSantis signs bill to allow the formerly incarcerated to obtain credits for vocational licenses
4th Street Barber in St. Petersburg. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a measure (SB 472) that ensures that credits earned from prison-based classes count toward professional licensing, providing more opportunities for the formerly incarcerated to become self-sufficient.
The Correctional Education Program (CEP) within the Department of Corrections provides educational programming to inmates. The CEP provides 92 career and technical education courses in 37 vocational trades that are aligned to Florida's in-demand occupations, including barbering, cosmetology, electrical contracting, landscaping, plumbing, and HVAC contracting, according to a bill analysis.
The CEP has awarded 36,689 certificates and industry-recognized credentials over the last four years. However, these certificates were largely only valid while the people receiving them were incarcerated, and they are not recognized outside of prison, according to the Florida Policy Institute.
'The measure signed [Thursday] will help remedy that by ensuring that credits earned from prison-based classes are recognized and counted toward professional licensing requirements,' said institute CEO Sadaf Knight in a statement. 'Additionally, common-sense reforms like this one that bolster workforce opportunities for returning citizens can save taxpayer dollars spent on incarceration costs by reducing the rate of recidivism.'
The measure requires the Department of Corrections, in coordination with applicable licensing boards within the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), or DBPR when there isn't a board, to design a program that ensures credits earned from prison classes are recognized and counted toward professional licensing requirements.
The measure was sponsored in the Senate by Central Florida Republican Keith Truenow and in the House by Miami-Dade Democrat Kevin Chambliss and Seminole County Republican Rachel Plakon.
'The most important factor for reformed individuals in preventing recidivism is employment upon one's release from prison,' said Chambliss in a statement. 'For inmates that have shown that they wish to be productive members of society upon the completion of their sentence, the state has a responsibility to make their transition as smooth as possible.'
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