Gale Buckner

DALTON, Ga. -- A crowd of more than 60 people came to City Hall on Thursday night to celebrate two years of work in a local project to assist parolees.

Project Destiny -- Dalton Entering Servanthood to Inspire a New You -- is a faith-based outreach program that partners local churches and charities with the Georgia parole program.

Beverly Parker, chief parole officer for Dalton and Whitfield County, calls the program "a bridge" and said, "Through Project Destiny we've been able to meet a lot of the needs to get parolees back to feeling normal again."

The assistance can be as simple as paying a fee for an identification card or driver's license, which the project has done nine times in the last two years, she said, or helping parolees find work, which the project has done 43 times since it began.

The groups involved give free counseling services and have begun a weekly support group for parolees called Prisoners Anonymous.

Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles Chairwoman Gale Buckner called the local program a "model" for others across the state.

There are seven full programs such as the Dalton project across the state, she said. Five other communities have a form of the program in place.

Dalton Mayor David Pennington underscored the difficulty of finding people willing to help someone who leaves the prison system.

"This group you all minister to is not a group everyone's jumping out to help," he said. "If we don't help these people, we know what's going to happen 90 percent of the time."

Ms. Parker said that before the program parolees would get a set of clothes, $25 and a bus ticket to start their lives over after spending years in prison.

PROJECT DESTINY

Project Destiny numbers over first two years:

* 382: Parolees through the project

* 289: Care packages given

* 124: Received seven sets of clothing

* 43: Employed through the project

* 38: Received transportation assistance

* 32: Received one week's food

* 30: Referred for GED training

* 9: Received assistance with ID card fees

* 8: Received medical assistance

Source: Project Destiny