Learning to cook may offer inmates a recipe for career

Culinary classes popular at jail

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JESSE YEATMAN Wayne Briscoe of Great Mills helps chef Robert ‘‘R.J.” Johnson set up food Saturday evening at the St. Mary’s County Detention Center, where 10 inmates celebrated completion of a culinary course. The program, offered by the College of Southern Maryland, aims to teach inmates job skills to help integrate back into society upon release. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

Along with education programs – the detention center’s GED is the most popular and always has a waiting list – the sheriff’s office is expanding its job training and vocational programs.

‘‘Because I want to be a better cook. I learned all kinds of techniques,” Wayne Briscoe said of his reason for signing up for the five-week course. He is serving a 15-month sentence and found the class to be a change from day-to-day life at the detention center.

He was most impressed with how to make prepared foods from scratch, including biscuits, pasta salads and sauces.

‘‘It’s a long time in the making,” said Robert ‘‘R.J.” Johnson, a chef and instructor at the Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and the College of Southern Maryland. He said plans for the program reach back almost two years, but now that the first class has completed the course, he hopes to come back often. He said the inmates were ‘‘very well behaved,” and seemed genuinely interested in learning the finer points of food preparation.

Douglass Fenwick, 24, of Loveville said the class was ‘‘something to do,” but also will hopefully help him when he gets released. Fenwick is serving two years on an assault charge.

‘‘It was a real good experience. I wish I could have got it somewhere else,” he said. Fenwick, like some of the other 10 inmates who participated in the program, would like to go to culinary school after he is released.

Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Merican, commander of corrections in St. Mary’s, and Lt. Deborah Diedrich vet the inmates to see who will be a good fit for the program. People in jail for the first time and those with sentences long enough to compete the courses are chosen first. ‘‘Unfortunately some got released before they got into it,” Merican said. Without goals and proper skills, released inmates often have a hard time getting back on their feet and sometimes turn to crime again.

‘‘What we have been doing has not worked,” Merican said. All too often the same people end up back in jail soon after release, he said.

The new programs are part of a partnership with the College of Southern Maryland. Merican said he hopes to grow the vocational program to include other skill training such as carpentry and masonry. ‘‘It’s good to get positive things from the detention center that can better the community,” he said.

Merican said there are waiting lists for the program, along with computer courses that are offered at the detention center. He is hoping to offer the cooking course four times a year, but that will be based on funding.