Work-Release Program Moves Inmates From Cellblocks to City Blocks

LEWISTON, Idaho —  Leroy McCaskey has a year left to serve on his drug-dealing conviction. He’s passing time by making coconut cream pies for senior citizens.

Vernon Paulsen isn’t due to be released from his grand theft sentence for 53 days, but he’s pouring cement for sidewalks.

Dustin Holm is serving eight years for writing bad checks. He used part of that time to design the new Idaho license plate commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Holm, 31, is hoping his self-taught art skills will land him a job when he’s released in December.

“Hopefully it will take me someplace,” said Holm, whose arms are covered with tattoos. “I definitely want to work in the art field.”

The three inmates at the Idaho State Correctional Institution are all “redshirts,” part of an aggressive program to take prison inmates out of cellblocks and onto city blocks to perform needed work.

“Idleness is the biggest problem we have in corrections,” said Dean Allen, deputy warden of the Orofino prison.

To combat that, about 100 of the prison’s inmates are sent into communities across northern Idaho, where they do construction work, landscaping, litter removal and other labor-intensive jobs.

They’ve painted the Kibbie Dome at the University of Idaho, erected play equipment in a Lewiston park and tended the baseball field at Lewis-Clark State College during the recent NAIA World Series.

“We’ve done work for every municipality within 60 miles,” Allen said.

The inmates are easy to spot. They wear red T-shirts.

This isn’t a chain gang. It’s more like a grass gang, because much of the work is tending lawns.

The work-release program was started in 1996 at the prison in Orofino, 50 miles from here. The inmates have performed all kinds of jobs that Lewiston could not have otherwise afforded.

Bob Bushfield, director of community development for Lewiston, was one of the first to use the program when inmates helped remodel his department’s offices. He figured that saved about $45,000 for the northern Idaho city of 30,000 residents.

“We wouldn’t be in this building right now if it weren’t for the program,” Bushfield said.

Many prisons have programs in which inmates make office furniture or license plates inside the walls. What’s different here is that inmates are roaming the streets, sometimes without seeing a guard for several hours.

The lure of freedom can be too much for some. “We’ve had a few take off,” Allen acknowledged.

That included one inmate who escaped from a work crew in Lewiston, checked into a local motel under his own name and then waited for guards to come for him.

That inmate was near the end of a 20-year term and didn’t want to leave prison, figuring the escape would add years.

But most of the participants in the work-release program are in the final months of their sentence and are not inclined to flee.

The inmates can work only for government agencies and nonprofit groups. They cannot work in the private sector.

There have been few complaints that prisoners are taking work from law-abiding citizens, Allen said. The work probably would not be performed at all if not for cheap inmate labor, he said.

“We do grunt work other people won’t do,” said Sgt. Kent Shriver, a supervisor of the inmates.

Other states have also made innovative use of prison workers in recent years.

South Dakota has been using inmates to wire schools to the Internet. New Hampshire has them wash and repair police cars. They inspect nail polish bottles in Maryland and assemble office furniture in Virginia.

But nationwide, only 3% of eligible prisoners are employed in work-release programs, Bushfield said.

Managers of the Orofino program are especially proud of the construction of the Orchards Christian Church.

Inmates completed the $400,000 job in four months, and the work was so cheap that the church had to borrow only a fraction of the money.

“I thought maybe when they saw all those guys in their red shirts, one of the neighbors might complain,” minister Adrian Burd said. “We have not had any complaints.”

McCaskey was baking in the kitchen of a community center one recent day, while in another room some seniors were learning to line dance.

“I love doing it,” McCaskey, 53, said. “This is an excellent way to spend time.” He received a five-year sentence for dealing drugs and has 2 1/2 years left to serve.

Lorna Day, kitchen supervisor for the community center, said the program allows her to find workers in an economy where low-paying jobs are not very attractive. The inmates are also dependable, she said.

The center pays the prison system $3.25 per hour for each inmate it hires. Of that, the inmate gets 90 cents. They can spend the money in the prison commissary and save some for when they are released.

There is no study to determine if the program is successful in reducing recidivism, Allen said. But he believes that inmates in the program find more success once they return to society.

Allen said people who oppose such programs on the grounds that prison should be punitive are not looking at reality.

“Ninety-seven percent of the people we have locked up are going to be somebody’s neighbor in a few years,” Allen said. “What kind of neighbor do you want?”