FLEMING ISLAND – Sheriff Darryl Daniels, who was elected last year and sworn in on Jan. 2, called for the formation of a center in Clay County to help prisoners transition into daily life when they are released from incarceration.

Daniels made the statements at a town-hall forum on Sunday at the Town Hall Event Center on Fleming Island. He was among several elected officials at the event – including Diane Hutchings, vice chair of the Clay County Commission and Orange Park Councilwoman Connie Thomas.

“In my former employment (Duval County), the Jacksonville re-entry center was one of the departments that reported to me, which many people don't know,” Daniels told Clay Today. “One of the things I want to do is have a re-entry center, in some form or fashion, here in Clay County.

“One of the things in Duval is that the re-entry center caters to people who have served state time, coming out of state prison. That's good, but in Clay County, we don’t have a bunch of people coming from the state prison system back to our county. What we do have are a lot of county-sentenced individuals who are in my care. And once they complete their sentences, they just get thrown back into the same environments they came from.”

Nicole Porter, a civil rights activist who has received national attention for her work, was the featured speaker at Sunday’s event, which drew Clay County leaders from various sectors as well as simply concerned citizens.

“Rather than focusing on jail cells, practical solutions to these issues should include therapeutic interventions for at-risk youth and their families, with the support of faith leaders and law-enforcement officers,” Porter said. “We need work programs. … Deep racial disparities exist throughout the criminal-justice system, from the point of arrest to the point of incarceration to the point of post-incarceration, including voting and employment.”

African Americans are incarcerated at a rate of approximately five times to that of whites nationwide, according to multiple studies.

“For me, personally, if we don't get behind (these issues), we’re going to fall behind,” said Ron Raymond, a white, retired business owner and manager. “We need to get rid of that box, that ‘Check if you’ve been convicted of a crime’ box. … They already served their time.

“Part of the problem is white-haired guys like me don’t hire people who have been in jail. In my factory, I had several folks who had been incarcerated. I had very good luck with some, not so much with others. But it didn’t make any difference what their race was.”

Florida’s incarceration rates of blacks exceeds nationwide averages, according to Porter and several studies.

“We have a problem with recidivism, and that’s nationwide,” Daniels said. “We need to introduce these inmates and former inmates to resources that aren’t going to be the same paths they’ve already been down. They need to have options that aren’t the same environments they came from, that led them to incarceration. … You can’t go back to the same environments and expect a different result.”

One of the organizers of Sunday’s event, which was to honor Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was Rev. William H. Randall, pastor of St. Simon Missionary Baptist Church in Orange Park.

“Ex-felons who come out of prison, come out of jail, they may not have a place to live, they may not have job options,” Randall said. “They need resources, so they don't fall back into old habits and re-offend. And that's a weight on taxpayers, when we're housing criminals who offend on a repeated basis.

“Some of these people come out of prison and they’re immediately homeless.”

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Email Christiaan DeFranco at chris@opcfla.com. Follow him on Twitter @cdefranco.