The culture of the Gadsden Correctional Facility in Quincy, FL is all about improvement.

“I go to orientation every Thursday,” says Warden Jerry Buscher. “I tell them all, ‘you’re all here because you made a mistake. All of us, in life, make mistakes. It’s what you do after that. Take a bad situation, turn it into a positive; get your GED, if you have your education, get a vocational trade. If you have a vocational trade and you don’t want to do that, take home a healthy body.”

Improvement opportunities at Gadsden go beyond programming options to include healthy living and preparing for release.

Alysha Rahmer is a resident.

“I want to be able to go out and make a positive impact on people when I go home,” she says, “so to be able to have some of the tools to do that, and be given more of the skills that I need to be able to help myself when I go home and the people around me, that’s a great opportunity. And I’m very grateful to MTC for that.”

“Being at Gadsden is a very special place to be,” explains resident Fisthnise Saint Breux, “and it is very great to be here, because different facilities, they do not have those kinds of programs the way we do here. Our staff, they care for us. Because they provide us with everything that we need.”

Warden Buscher praises staff members as well. “The staff at Gadsden, there is about a fourth of the staff here have been here 15 years or longer. And they stay here because it’s a clean facility, it’s got wonderful grounds, it’s safe. And they like helping people, they like the atmosphere.”

Cathryn Lokey is an independent consultant that assists the facility with meeting programming needs.

“I had this idea about privately managed prisons from the media, from things I had heard,” she relates. “And luckily, I’m a pretty open-minded person as it is, and I know that there are always two sides to every story. But this company is the real deal. The collaboration, the encouragement. Everywhere I go, from the corporate office all the way down here to the facility where the rubber meets the road, people are invested in it. And they’re invested in social impact and social change. And I think that they are making a difference. The company is making a difference. It’s fulfilling its purpose.”