Inmates who qualify for the program can participate in about a dozen different vocational programs, including welding, custom garment and sewing, auto paint and body repair, culinary arts, diesel engine repair, meat processing, and farm work.

The county provides these programs to give inmates more resources before they reenter society.

Ralph Carden, an inmate, is in the carpentry vocational program at the Manatee County Central Jail.

He has been in the program for two months and already spends his days working with his hands.

Carpentry is something he enjoys, and he says it's going to help him reenter the world outside of jail.

"This is going to help me reenter the new world because it’s actually an opportunity that we can utilize outside of the real world," Carden said.

The vocational programs at the jail save the jail more than a million dollars a year.

Inmates grow their own produce and food from the farm, and use that as their meals in the jail.

Along with the other programs such as welding and carpentry, some of the items the inmates create are even available for the public to purchase at the front office.

Sheriff Rick Wells says the program is a great way to help give inmates more resources before reentering society.

"That’s all we are trying to do we are trying to help the inmates be better people. To help them learn a trade if they haven’t if they don’t have a trade already and if nothing else give them an opportunity to be outside and enjoy the sunshine each and every day and keep them out of the facility," Sheriff Wells said.

Carden says carpentry does a lot for the people he works with in the program, but for him, it's the feeling of achieving success looking at this chair he helped build.

"It doesn’t compare to anything not in my book not from where I'm at I’m 35 years old and I've never had the opportunity to completely say I've started something from beginning to end," he said.

Carden says it’s a possibility he will go into a career in carpentry when his time at the jail is up.