By KIMBERLEY GILLES, associate editor

"I'm not just graduating divers and welders. I'm also trying to graduate guys that can grow with a company – men that have leadership capabilities." That's Fred Johnson discussing the prisoner rehabilitation program he came out of "retirement" to help re-launch.

In June, Johnson, an American Welding Society certified welding educator, began teaching welding, diving and other skills to a group of 14 prisoners at the Marine Technology Center located at the California Institution for Men in Chino, Calif. Johnson is trying to pass on to his students some of the skills that he acquired during his 35 years at the helm of his commercial diving company.

A few years back Johnson retired from contracting, then later launched a boat company in the San Francisco Bay area. "When I saw that the Marine Technology Center was reopening, I applied for the job," he says. Johnson now runs his boat company and the diving program for the Marine Technology Center. He says he runs the diving program as if it were a company. The men who graduate from the program will know what it is like to work for a commercial diving contractor.

Over the course of the 11-month training program, Johnson immerses his students in a curriculum that includes welding, diving physics, navigation, report writing, air systems, seamanship, blueprint reading, diesel engines and marine construction.

Johnson is the program's only instructor for now, and he says he teaches students skills they need to work in offshore industry. Students are trained in underwater and surface welding. They will be certified to AWS D1.1, and they will know about rigging and top-side tending. And Johnson says his students will graduate with foreman capabilities. They will be able to handle all types of contract work, including welding, bridge construction and repair, pipelines, offshore oil drilling and harbor diving. Johnson says employers are lined up at the door.

The diving school initially was opened in 1970, but closed in 2003 because of budget constraints. It reopened in June as part of a state effort to provide rehabilitative programs to reduce recidivism — the return to behavior that would lead them back to prison. From 1970 to 2003, recidivism rates of graduates from the Chino commercial diving program were 6 percent to 12 percent, far lower than the 50 percent to 70 percent rate for the state's entire prison system.

Inmates at the Chino prison are eligible for the program if they have not committed a violent crime, and if they demonstrate aptitudes for math, physics and mechanics. Also, they must have less than four years left in their sentence. The diving program can accommodate approximately 100 inmates.