CJK0321 – Intake and Release is a 16-hour course within Florida's revised 445-hour Correctional Basic Recruit Training Program, carrying zero credit hours as a clock-hour academy component.
The course covers the two points at which a person enters and leaves custody — procedurally routine, and disproportionately consequential. Intake is where a facility learns who it has taken in, and where the great majority of preventable harm is either identified or missed. Release is where legal authority to detain ends, and where an error means either unlawfully holding someone or releasing someone who should not have been released.
The intake half covers verifying legal authority to detain, identification and fingerprinting, the property inventory, search procedures, the initial medical and mental health screening, suicide risk screening, classification and housing assignment, PREA risk screening, notification rights, and orientation of the new inmate to facility rules.
Screening at intake is the single highest-value activity in the course. The first twenty-four hours in custody carry the highest suicide risk in the correctional system, and intake screening is the mechanism for identifying it. Medical screening at intake identifies withdrawal risk, chronic conditions, and injuries — including injuries sustained before arrival, which must be documented for the protection of both the inmate and the facility.
The release half covers verifying release authority, warrant and detainer checks, property return, release documentation, and the reentry and referral information a facility provides.
The course is offered at approximately 18 Florida institutions with correctional training centers: Broward, Chipola, College of Central Florida, College of the Florida Keys, Daytona State, Eastern Florida State, Florida Gateway, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Gulf Coast State, North Florida, Northwest Florida State, Palm Beach State, Pasco-Hernando, Pensacola State, Santa Fe, South Florida State, St. Johns River, and Valencia.
The revised Correctional Basic Recruit Training Program (CBRTP) runs 445 hours across thirteen courses and is required for certification as a correctional officer under Chapter 943, Florida Statutes. The curriculum is written and maintained by the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC) through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, so content is consistent statewide. Broward College's published sequence is representative:
Every component is a clock-hour course carrying zero credit hours, and none counts toward an associate degree.
Some Florida institutions still deliver an earlier 420-hour sequence using different course numbers — CJK0300 Introduction to Corrections, CJK0305 Communications, CJK0310 Officer Safety, CJK0315 Facility and Equipment, CJK0320 Intake and Release, CJK0325 Supervising in a Correctional Facility, CJK0330 Supervising Special Populations (20 hrs), and CJK0335 Responding to Incidents and Emergencies (16 hrs), alongside the shared First Aid, Firearms, Defensive Tactics, and Physical Abilities components.
The two versions cover overlapping material, but the course numbers, hour counts, and boundaries between courses do not map one-to-one. CJK0330 (20 hrs) is not equivalent to CJK0326 (25 hrs), and CJK0335 (16 hrs) is not equivalent to CJK0336 (20 hrs). Anyone performing equivalency evaluation — including military credit evaluation — should work from the actual course numbers and hours on the transcript rather than from course titles, and confirm which curriculum version the training center delivered.
Completing this course does not certify anyone. Recruits must finish the full 445-hour academy, pass the State Officer Certification Examination (SOCE), and satisfy the employment and background requirements of Chapter 943, Florida Statutes. Certification is granted by CJSTC, not by the college, and an officer must also be employed by an agency to be certified.
Requirements attach to the academy rather than to this individual course: minimum age, U.S. citizenship, high school diploma or equivalent, no disqualifying criminal history, a background investigation, a physical examination and drug screening, and a passing score on the Florida Basic Abilities Test (CJBAT).
Academy training is PSAV clock-hour instruction, not college credit, and does not transfer as general education. Several Florida colleges award block credit toward an A.S. in Criminal Justice Technology for full academy completion plus certification, under local articulation agreements rather than statewide SCNS equivalency. Confirm terms with the receiving institution. Note the distinction from CJC1000 Introduction to Corrections, which is a 3-credit transferable college course rather than academy training.
Officers already certified in another discipline — law enforcement to corrections, or correctional probation to corrections — complete abbreviated crossover programs drawing on a subset of these courses rather than the full academy. Candidates should work from the crossover curriculum published by their training center.
This is the fact that gives a 16-hour course its weight. Suicide risk in custody is concentrated sharply in the period immediately after intake, when the shock of arrest, intoxication or withdrawal, and the collapse of a person's circumstances converge. Intake screening exists to identify that risk, and an officer who treats screening as a form-completion exercise rather than an assessment will miss it. Failure to act on a known risk also exposes the officer and agency to liability under the deliberate indifference standard. Instructors typically teach this portion with real case examples.
Injuries a person arrives with must be documented at intake. Without that record, an injury discovered later is presumed to have occurred in custody, which exposes staff to allegations they cannot disprove. Recruits sometimes treat this as bureaucratic; it is protective, in both directions.
Releasing a person who should have been held — a missed detainer, an uncomputed sentence, an outstanding warrant — is among the most serious operational errors a facility can make, and it makes news. Holding a person past their release date is a civil rights violation. The verification steps this course teaches exist because both failures happen when they are skipped.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026