County jail's life skills classes paying off already

It's something Rick Harrold would never have done a year ago.

Harrold is a prisoner at the Salt Lake County Jail. On March 14, while Harrold was in a common area watching TV with other inmates, one of them started to have a seizure.

"I heard this horrifying sound. He fell backwards and hit his head. He was slobbering stuff out of his mouth, he had no air," Harrold said.

After a brief moment of being stunned, Harrold let his instincts take over. The former drug user had just received his CPR certification from the jail. He used those skills to help an inmate whose name he still doesn't know.

"I gotta do what I gotta do," he said. "I feel like I helped a man. The only life that can be saved is mine."

He turned the man on his side, checked for oxygen and began clearing the man's airways. He checked the man's pulse and found it was going as fast as a race car. Other jail staff members arrived shortly after Harrold began giving help and took over from there. But jail officials are praising Harrold for his quick action.

For Harrold, however, that moment was about more than just helping another man.

"(Before,) I probably would have looked at the guy thinking, 'Wow, dude's slobbering,"' he said.

Harrold said before he took his classes at the jail, he would have just walked back into his cell and ignored the man in seizure.

His change in attitude is exactly what the jail administration and the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office was hoping for when they began a new program in January called the Life Skills Program. Prisoners who are selected for the program are given four weeks of intensive classes daily. They are given lessons in different areas to help benefit both themselves and society once they are released.

The classes include instruction on personal finances, resume writing, parenting, self-empowerment and a health class taught by the Salt Lake Valley Health Department.

Sheriff Jim Winder said the Life Skills Program is part of a changing trend in corrections nationwide. Rather than warehousing prisoners, the idea is to help them become productive members of society.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop," he said. "We want to motivate through opportunity. Most people here have made bad choices. They are not inherently evil."

By engaging prisoners in positive activities rather than letting them sit in their cells, Winder said the prisoner's mental and physical condition is improved and a skill is learned.

When inmates complete the Life Skills Program, their names are referred to Workforce Services to help them find jobs upon release.