A new employment program in Barren County is helping newly released inmates from the Barren County Detention Center and referrals from the Barren and Metcalfe County court systems fill job vacancies in local industries.

Jackie Brown, a member of the Industrial Development Economic Authority of Glasgow, said the as-yet unnamed program is a collaboration between Glasgow’s Kentucky Career Center, the 43rd Judicial District and the Barren County jail.

“We’re looking for outside-the-box ways for industries to get more employment,” he said.

The program finds ways to help people who often have trouble finding employment locally fill vacant jobs in the county’s industries, Brown said.

“The goal is to reach out to the overlooked,” he said.

The program involves encouraging inmates at the jail to seek out the career center upon release, Brown said, adding that people involved with the program will go to the jail every few weeks to speak to inmates about the program.

“We’re making sure those individuals know how to reach out for anything they might need,” he said.

Barren County Jailer Tracy Bellamy said the program has been active for about four months. Frequently, inmates who are released end up incarcerated again before long, he said.

“A lot of times, when an inmate gets out, they don’t have much to go back to other than what they did before,” he said.

Many inmates, when they leave jail, find many employers unwilling to hire people with criminal records and then turn back to crime, Bellamy said.

“We’re just trying to look for a different path for them to take once they get out,” he said.

“They’re coming in regularly and speaking with the inmates,” Bellamy said, adding that demonstrations that have been held in the jail as part of the program have taught inmates skills like how to handle job applications and balance a checkbook.

Bellamy said there are roughly 300 unfilled jobs at any given time in manufacturing facilities in the county.

While Bellamy wouldn’t say which facilities were hiring through this program, he said he toured Akebono Brake Corp.’s Glasgow facility and that Akebono expressed an interest in hiring workers through the program.

Representatives of Akebono did not return calls seeking comment.

While some inmates have gotten factory jobs through the program, Bellamy said figures of how many former inmates were employed and able to keep a job aren’t yet available.

Julie Adkins, the owner of You Turn, a private court-monitoring service that is also involved in the program, said the program is also identifying people who owe fines or child support payments and people who have previously been unable to hold a job through cases moving through the 43rd Judicial District.

“Some of them haven’t had a job in months and some of them have trouble maintaining employment,” she said.

The court refers people it identifies to the career center, where they can get help with training and finding work, Adkins said.

“We’ve sort of come together to form a group so that all these resources are available to these overlooked persons,” she said.