Rough Rider Industries: Turning time served into job skills and second chances

Rick Gardner, Director, Rough Rider Industries: The punishment is getting sent to prison. But does that really make better people if they’re sentenced for a five-year sentence, and then they get out and it was nothing but punishment that they endured while they were under?

So I go back to the mission of the Department of Corrections—it’s transforming lives, influencing change, and strengthening communities.

So Rough Rider Industries is the job skills training program for the North Dakota Department of Corrections. And so what our role is within the rehabilitative process is instilling employability skills. That puts both an emphasis on the technical skills, such as welding, carpentry, to soft skills, dependability, effective communication, working well with others.

We make desks. We make chairs. We make signs. But that’s actually a byproduct of what our actual product is or product is. Our product is our people.

Sisson: I took advantage of what they offered to learn everything that I possibly could, to the best of my ability, and try to make the best out of everything that I could, to try to gain the skills necessary to be marketable for myself when I get out to an employer.

Michelle Pfaff, Director of Education, North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Technology is evolving, the world is evolving, and we need to be preparing people to enter into the world of today, especially some of the people that have been here 20, 30 years. Living outside day to day is so much different than what they came into.

If you think about self-checkout at Walmart or Target, you know that’s different technology. So being able to provide those sorts of experiences for people is what’s important to me.

So we’ve partnered with Autodesk to offer their suite of certifications. It really is a great opportunity for our residents to learn an important skill and get certified. That’s a nationally recognized certification to be able to go out into the community once they leave and have a job, that’s going to be a very good wage job.

Sisson: It was 2011 when I was able to get into the CAD room. I found out, that I’m, you know, quite the computer nerd. I like AutoCAD pretty well. I like programing Visual Basic primarily, and I like using Visual Basic to make AutoCAD do the things that I want it to do.

I’m currently working on the control booth for the Missouri River Correctional Center. So we are replacing a current control booth that already exists with a new design that makes the area more secure and utilize the space better.

Pfaff: A challenge we have here is that Internet access is restricted. So I went through a number of genres to have those websites allowed.

Gardner: A lot of our guys rely on books or manuals to learn on. We haven’t had the ability to go on to a YouTube video and look up things.

Pfaff: The other thing that it helps with is I like to think of it as a pipeline of workers for our Rough Rider Industries staff. When they are out building furniture, that’s some of the software that they’re using. So by continuing to train up people as the people that are currently working in those positions are exiting, you know, we want to be able to continue the work.

Tim Olson,Resident, North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: So kind of come down to like right here, somewhere around in here, and click again. Yep.

My passion is teaching. Now that I’ve been incarcerated, I see a lot of guys that come in and they didn’t grow up knowing that certain things existed. So that’s what I’m most excited to do, is take guys that really had no idea that you could do design with AutoCAD or with Inventor. And I want to be able to empower them.

I’m a lifelong learner, and so there’s no hyperbole when I say that learning new things and then being able to pass it on, is life-sustaining for me because it gives me purpose.

Sisson: Learning something new inside the institution is very impactful because it gives the opportunity to see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a better path forward. It gives an individual hope, and without that hope, you continue down the same path. If you’re continuing down the same path, you’re likely to come back to prison.

Gardner: You know, does employment or instilling employability skills, does it make a difference? I’d say it certainly does. Looking back three years of the people that released, how many came back to prison in those three years? So the Department of Corrections is 37% basically. And if you’ve come to the Rough Rider program, it’s 8.6%.

Sisson: My release date is coming up soon. You know, I want to buy a house within a few years of being released. So I have to work hard, I have to save money, I have to build credit. Everything that normal, everyday life is about.

I just want to be a good citizen and get my life together and start living life instead of being in prison.