Many ex-cons struggle to find any job at all—let alone one that seems akin to joining the circus.
But as part of a new project in Australia's Northern Territory, five former inmates are already learning what the state government calls "new life skills" in a crocodile-handling and farm-skills course being run by the city of Darwin's correctional center (map of Australia).
The course, which is to be offered to other former prisoners, is the "first of its kind in Australia and will give prisoners the real-life skills that they can use back in their communities and help them with their rehabilitation," said Syd Stirling, the Northern Territory's minister for justice.
Prisoners will be trained not just in crocodile handling but also in aquaculture, fence repair, and other skills that could help them find work on the territory's vast ranches.
Down on the Farm
The 11-week course comes with nationally recognized qualifications as well as work experience at the Darwin Crocodile Farm.
"It's very hot, it's testing," said farm owner Mick Burns of crocodile handling. "A lot of people aren't comfortable in and around crocodiles."
The prisoners have "only been starting off with the smaller animals, and as they get more familiar with it—and probably more acutely aware of some of the dangers—the animals will start to get a bit bigger."
Burns says training more people in crocodile farming would be a benefit to the Northwest Territory's lucrative crocodile industry, which pulls in tourists and harvests the reptiles for leather and meat.
The Darwin Crocodile Farm alone has some 36,000 saltwater crocodiles, giving the five inmates plenty to work with—such as cleaning the reptiles' pens, working in the meat room, and feeding the crocodiles raw chickens.
Aborigines
Aborigines and other indigenous Australians have a relatively high rate of relapse into criminal behavior. But Stirling, the justice minister, hopes the skills that indigenous prisoners learn will help them buck the trend by improving their job prospects.
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