1 week Ago By Rebecca Raney [email protected]
There’s a saying which Blount County Sheriff’s deputy Mark Ellis enjoys: “You’re either doing time, or you’ve got time; the difference is your mindset.” It comes from a book written by an ex-prisoner that Ellis uses in his reentry, rehabilitation and recovery programs — programs that just got a significant upgrade thanks to an expansion to the Blount County Jail’s ORIJIN tablet fleet. Some background; in 2022, BCSO was one of three agencies across the state to receive a test batch of ORIJIN tablets, according to spokesperson Marian O’Briant.
Now, more and more state agencies have introduced tablet learning to supplement traditional in-person classes meant to prepare inmates for life on the outside. For BCSO’s part, they’ve increased their initial fleet to almost 200, and as inmate program coordinator for the Blount County Jail, Ellis couldn’t be more excited. “I’m really excited about this because we’ve been working on it for quite a while, to be able to literally run educational tablets 24/7,” said Ellis.
“And now we’re doing it. I can assign a tablet to an inmate, and we work directly with ORIJIN who help us manage and maintain them. And not a single one — out of 193, not a one — has come back damaged from abuse.
” The accountability displayed by inmates with the physical tablets is also reflected in the dramatic improvement seen in recidivism rates among first-time offenders. Ellis pulled data spanning the last three years for recidivism rates among first-time offenders, who make up approximately 63% of the inmates housed in Blount County Jail. Of those, more than 37% returned at least once after release on a new charge before ORIJIN tablet programs were available.
Afterwards? Only 15%. “So, to answer the question of how do reentry programs directly affect recidivism return rates? Well, I mean, there it is. It speaks for itself,” said Ellis.
Blount County Jail offers seven courses currently, of which only two — Money Essentials and Work Essentials — utilize ORIJIN tablets directly. The other five were either already in place before Ellis moved into the position in the months following the COVID lockdown or came from classes he’d taken through ORIJIN and reworked to fit an in-person setting. That’s another reason Ellis credits the program with working; for all that he holds his inmates accountable for their actions, he won’t throw them into something he isn’t willing to or hasn’t already done.
“I don’t think you can lead where you have not been,” said Ellis. “How am I going to stand up in front of them and tell them you’ve got to do this, this and this, and this is what it’s going to look like when I’ve not even done it? No. I want to be able to stand there and tell them what screwed me up in this, what I got hung up in.
” It’s a lot of work he puts into these programs. When asked if he’s ever thought it might be too much, Ellis was firm: “We’re not here to play judge for anybody. That position’s filled; we need not sit in that seat,” said Ellis.
“What we’re in is a corrective and a supportive role, to provide security and safety. Besides, on a more personal note, I’ve never met anybody that Jesus didn’t die for, that didn’t deserve another chance.” That doesn’t mean all inmates are immediately allowed into classes or use of tablets, however.
Certain housing classifications can disqualify an inmate, and any inmate can lose class or tablet privileges if they receive a sanction. The latter is a new rule Ellis introduced to make it clear how inmates are expected to act if they’re utilizing his programs. “Programs are a privilege,” said Ellis.
“And if we recognize that as a privilege, then it should be one of our highest priorities, and we should work to protect it.” The other five classes offered in-person include Bible studies, celebrate recovery, inmates to AA/NA meetings, moral recognition therapy (MRT), and recovery therapy. Add to that the more than 60 hours of classes available via ORIJIN tablets, which reward certificates upon completion, and Ellis says he ends up getting tablets back at the end of the week with a fully drained battery, and an overall healthier inmate population as well.
A manager at McDonald’s, Jackie McCullough is working towards her GED and looking forward to the birth of her first grandchild. She’s also only four months away from celebrating three years of sobriety from a narcotics addition which consumed her life for the last two decades and had her in-and-out of Blount County and surrounding jails. “I’ve been incarcerated total for a period of 14 years,” said McCullough.
“I’ve had the opportunity before Mr. Ellis to participate in reentry programs, but I just wasn’t ready.” McCullough spoke candidly about struggling through a drug addiction which began despite a friend begging her not to.
“At the time my friend was doing it, and I figured well, he’s OK with it. Why not me?” said McCullough. “He begged me not to start, but I chose to do it anyways, and I fell in love with it.
” When she came to Ellis during her penultimate incarceration, she said he made he work to prove that it wasn’t all bluster again. He gave her a MRT workbook that included 12 steps, or levels, each with their own tasks and homework that worked off the last. The point wasn’t to complete the book, said McCullough, but to complete the work through step 12 and then continuously apply those tenets through steps 13 -16.
“There’s no completion to the program; there’s just this stage of, I guess you could call it normalcy and that’s really just the open door to the rest of your life,” said McCullough. “But now you have the tools. Now you’ve got goals.
You’ve got understanding, insight, a lot of internal change that you can apply to your everyday life.” It isn’t easy, though. Getting through the classes offered by the jail and completing the certificate courses through ORIJIN still didn’t fully prepare McCullough for when she got out and had to reckon with her next steps.
“I was scared,” she said. “It took me about three days to figure out that I was actually free. But you have to be honest, you have to know you can’t control or get rid of your demons.
Instead of bottling them like I used to I talk about it now, and I put my foot on the ground firm and make that choice.” McCullough closed out saying she credits Blount County’s program with saving her life. Specifically, she mentioned watching another inmate complete the same tablet courses and being galvanized to do the same.
“Without her, I really doubt I’d still be alive,” said McCullough. “If I were, I’d be back in jail, for sure.” Founded in 2014, ORIJIN is an educational technology company that “provides secure tablet computers connected to robust cloud-based learning and communications platform to solve some of the most consequential challenges correctional facilities face across the U.
S,” according to their website. Although the company’s website advertises the tablets as Wi-Fi and cellular data enabled, Ellis noted that all tablets utilized in the Blount County Jail are strictly limited to access only the ORIJIN cloud platform. In fact, Ellis brought a tablet to the meeting room two floors above the Blount County Jail just to show how functionally useless it had been made to be.
Out of range of the jail’s network and unable to access cellular data, the tablet remained fixed on ORIJIN’s homepage the entire interview..
