Graduates of the Perry County Parole and Probation Reentry Education and Employment Program prepare for make their entrance to their graduation ceremony on Friday, October 3, 2025. The participants, all granted parole, spent 90 days at the facility to undergo an intensive rehabilitation program to address substance abuse and mental health issues while also taking job training and career classes. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)
Michael Moss got a certificate on Friday and was freed from confinement after spending about eight years in prison.
“I still didn’t think I was going to make it,” Moss said about his parole application. “It was my fourth time going up and I finally made it,”
But as a condition of release, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles required Moss to complete the Perry County Parole and Probation Reentry Education and Employment Program (PREP), a 90-day residential curriculum to assist with the transition back into the community.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
“I had a bad drug problem, and it led me to prison,” he said. “I made bad choices. Coming here and into this program, it turned my whole life around. I got a job waiting for me. This is as long as I have been sober. I have gotten a lot of support.”
Moss, along with roughly 50 of his colleagues, is one of more than 400 people who have graduated from the PREP Center over the last five years.
The recidivism rate for those who have completed the program thus far is zero, which means that no one who has gone through the training and classes has been reincarcerated.
The re-entry program was established by Cam Ward, director of the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles, who was looking for a way to enhance public safety and assist those who are considered a higher risk to reoffend because of their background and criminal histories.
“I saw this work in other states,” Ward said. “I was actually in Michigan and saw it. I have seen it in other place, and my vision was, ‘We have day reporting centers now, we are about to open up our 13th one in Shelby County, but if we had a residential, we could do really intensive job training program that some people need, high risk individuals.’”
Given its success, the Perry County PREP center has become a cornerstone of the effort by Ward and staff at the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles to continue to draw down the state’s recidivism rate by drawing lessons from both its successes and its failures.
The individuals ordered by the parole board to complete rehabilitation at the center are transported to the facility once they are released from the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. They are taken through intake and checked for contraband and processed before getting escorted to the dormitories where they will remain for the next three months.
The PREP center operates in a similar way to a college, complete with classes and workshops hosted by organizations that the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles partnered with to oversee specialized parts of the curriculum. The goal is to provide students with the skills they need to successfully reenter into their communities.
Each weekday, students are transported to a campus in Thomasville where they will attend a variety of courses for the day. Among them classes related to substance abuse and cognitive behavioral therapy.
Jeremy Grant, who graduated alongside Moss on Friday, spent three years in prison for a parole revocation. He won parole in June.
“My stepfather was abusive, and there was unforgiveness and things in my life that I had to let go of and understand the core reason why I was addicted to drugs,” Grant said. “Drugs are really just a symptom of the problem, and unless you get to the bottom of it, you will never know what the real problem is.”
Jeremy Grant shakes hands with staff from the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles on Friday, October 3, 2025 after graduating from the residential rehabilitation program. He said the program taught him that his drug abuse stemmed from other issues related to his family. (Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)
Grant completed the rehabilitation program like Moss and he has lined up two jobs in construction.
Program participants also enroll in career and technical training programs.
The results garnered by the residential rehabilitation program are a factor in reducing the state’s recidivism rate, which went from 34% to 29%, placing it 12th in the country.
Alabama participates in Reentry 2030 with the stated goal of reducing recidivism in the state to less than 15%. This rehabilitation program, given what the graduates have accomplished, will set the foundation for that goal.
“If we replicate this, and do this kind of programming, we will get there,” Ward said.
The key will be to apply lessons from the residential program to other people who have been paroled but report to the other centers in Alabama.
“Some people require more intensive supervision,” Ward said. “You have to check on them in their home. You do more drug testing. Accountability is the key.”
