By Cameron Montemayor
St. Joseph News-Press, Mo.
CAMERON, Mo. — A first of its kind training facility for correctional officers in the home of a former Cameron, Missouri, prison was unveiled to the public with a grand opening ceremony on Monday.
Prison cells that once housed inmates at the Western Missouri Correctional Center have transformed into dorm-style living areas for officers in training at the new Academy for Excellence in Corrections. Missouri Department of Corrections officials cut the ceremonial ribbon on Monday for the academy located in the now-repurposed prison.
“We’ve known for a long time that we need to improve the quality of our training and really our environments are so unique, there’s not a lot of other environments that train people to work in prison,” Missouri Department of Corrections Director Trevor Foley said. “We were training people to do that in the classroom. So the opportunity to be able to use a former prison and turn it into the academy so that our environments where we train will mirror the environments where we work.”
The academy is designed to accommodate up to 144 trainees as they learn, practice and prepare for their career in an authentic corrections environment, simulating the settings of the department’s correctional facilities as well as aspects of its two probation and parole transition centers.
Foley said it’s been a near three-year process — and more than 7,000 hours of work — to get the former prison retrofitted to train future correctional officers for the state of Missouri. Officials began the process of overhauling WMCC after its inmates were relocated to the Crossroads Correctional Center — also in Cameron, Missouri — in 2022 due to decreasing population.
“This will be a statewide facility within the next few months. Every corrections officer that’s hired in the department will come here for their pre-service training,” Foley said.
Monday’s ceremony included remarks from department leaders, tours of the new facility and a dedication of the ceremony hall in honor of longtime corrections leader Tom Clements, who was killed in 2013 during an incident at a Colorado correctional facility shortly after taking charge.
In addition to living quarters, former administrative areas at the prison have been modernized and classrooms have been expanded to accommodate more than 30 trainees at a time.
“We need training for our guards, not only for our prisons but our jails as well. This will be so good to have our guards trained properly,” Missouri Rep. Dean VanSchoiack, R- Savannah, who attended the event, said. “I think that’s a wonderful thing for us to do with this facility. We’re going to be bringing people in from all over the state to train for their jobs in corrections.”
Academy officials said some of the first residential classes for new trainees are expected to begin in early 2025.
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