The Tifton Judicial Circuit Day Reporting Center has teamed up with Moultrie Technical College to raise the bar on standards by adding the GED program for probates to attend.

The TJCDRC is a program geared towards participants and family members in need of structure and assistance beyond routine probation supervision in hopes of reducing the likelihood that they will be incarcerated. It blends a high level of supervision with intensive services addressing employment, adult education, cognitive restructuring, life skills and substance abuse treatment.

“We are here to change their behavior in a positive way and to keep them out of the jailhouse,” said Ricky Bryan, the DRC’s center administrator.

The GED program, a component of the overall DRC program, helps probationers and parolees who otherwise would have been sentenced to a more costly incarceration, or who were in violation of the terms of their parole or probation, to acclimate into respectable, hard-working members of society by giving them the skills and education that are necessary to acquire jobs.

Probates must go through several other classes in the DRC program first before they are allowed to join the GED class. Classes include, but are not limited to, behavioral modifications, parenting skills, job readiness skills, individual counseling, health education and relapse prevention.

“We do an assessment on them when they come in the door. Criminal, family and social history and all this kind of information is obtained and we come up with a treatment plan for what the individual needs and how we can address those needs,” said Bryan.

The DRC has three full-time counselors and five contract counselors to help with substance addictions, anger management, stress and individual counseling.

The program requires that probates have a mandatory curfew of 7 or 8 p.m. depending on their performance at the DRC.

According to Arico Andrews, 33, a recent GED graduate, the program has given him self-esteem and a sense of responsibility.

Andrews has been on probation since 1997. He has a wife and four girls. He said before the DRC program he was “married but living the life of a bachelor,” neglecting everyone and everything of true value by selling drugs.

It was not until he entered the program and went through counseling and participated in all the behavioral modification classes that he realized that his actions affected the people around him, Andrews said.

“Before, I was thinking like a child. Now, I am one year clean and attending N.A. meetings. I don’t want my kids to grow up in this lifestyle,” said Andrews. “I wanted to go to change, and they had everything I needed. The DRC has given me the motivation and courage to do it.”

The goal of the program is to protect the public through intensive probation supervision and behavioral interventions, to reduce jail and prison populations, to reduce criminal thinking behavior, eliminate substance abuse, increase educational levels and employability, and to enable offenders to compensate the community and restore themselves as productive citizens.

“The DRC has given me a whole lot of confidence,” said Estill Spears, 27, who got his GED through the program in December. He plans to join the National Guard while attending MTC for welding before transferring into the Army.

This program is more cost-effective than incarceration, at a cost of $12 a day for each probate at the TJCDRC verses the $45 a day per inmate incarcerated.