Arkansas Baptist’s Scott Ford Center To Help Inmates Transition Back To Society

Arkansas Community Corrections inmates are transitioning into society at Arkansas Baptist College in a facility named for former Alltel President Scott Ford.

The Scott Ford Center for Entrepreneurship & Community Development was dedicated Wednesday.

Ford donated $2.5 million to the Little Rock-based historically black college to build a men’s dormitory, initially requesting that the gift be anonymous, said ABC’s president, Dr. Fitz Hill. Hill said he asked Ford’s permission to publicize the gift to be a catalyst to attract more community support.

Being associated with Ford helped the college obtain a $21 million loan from First Security Bank, Hill said. The center will be housed on the third floor of the First Security Community Union, a new three-story facility dedicated March 10.

The center was named for Ford at the request of Rick Massey, former Alltel chief strategy officer and general counsel, who donated $500,000 to the college.

“This center is really about giving people a second chance and giving them the tools to move forward in the life that they want to live – the life that they have today and the life that’s coming tomorrow,” Ford said.

The idea for the center came from a trip Hill made six or seven years ago to a Houston prison with an entrepreneurship program after being invited by Paul Chapman with Fellowship Bible Church. Chapman sits on the board of Under Grace Ministries, which is managing the program, and is also a former Alltel associate.

For the past six years, inmates have come to the ABC campus for classes. Participants in the current program undergo 240 hours in recovery, spiritual discipleship, entrepreneurial thinking and resource management. Credits transfer to ABC if they choose to enroll in the school. So far, about 30 students have started the program. Next year, the program will involve 100-120 inmates, Chapman said.

Chapman said that entrepreneurial thinking helps returning students be restored into the community. The program teaches that entrepreneurship is “the active pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources we control,” he said.

Kevin Murphy, chief deputy director of Arkansas Community Corrections, said the program is helping inmates transition back into society. In 2014, 10,000 Arkansas inmates were released from prison, and statistically, 43% will return to prison within three years, he said.

Among the ceremony’s attendees were a couple of dozen current inmates and Jason Duncan, 33, a former program participant and recovering drug addict and alcoholic. He has left state custody and is now an employee of Fellowship Bible Church and a UALR student majoring in international business and marketing.

“Six years ago, I walked onto this campus for the first time in a brown suit like my friends here – not a good color for me – and I began to experience God’s plan unfolding in my life through the Department of Corrections, which gave me the tools that I needed to live life sober, and through Arkansas Baptist College, which gave me hope, a vision for the future that was better than the past I was leaving behind,” he told the crowd.