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States Cut Work Programs for Prisoners

With the lunch hour near and the temperature in the 80s, the only souls in sight outside the courthouse here were two men taking turns aiming a pressure washer’s nozzle at the steps of the building.

With the lunch hour near and the temperature in the 80s, the only souls in sight outside the courthouse here were two men taking turns aiming a pressure washer’s nozzle at the steps of the building.

 

No lawyers. No police officers or jailers. No passers-by. Just two state prisoners, dressed in uniforms with thick stripes of green and white — trusties on work detail, a common sight across the South and many other parts of the country.

 

But by the time the summer ends, such work details, which provide services for local governments, will be overhauled here in Mississippi, the latest state to scale back work for inmates.

 

Although the programs were once regarded as sources of cheap — or free — labor for local governments, as well as employment for trusted inmates, officials in some states have concluded that they are too expensive to maintain. The effect is that while state prison systems can save money — $3.2 million a year in the case of Mississippi, according to state officials — many local governments are straining to find ways to replace the labor.

 

In a budget-cutting move, the Mississippi Department of Corrections announced on April 30 that it would shut down a program that paid counties to take in state inmates who worked free for local governments in return for shortened sentences. The change, scheduled to begin Aug. 1, is expected to affect more than 600 inmates. Other states that have reduced similar programs include North Carolina, Michigan and Florida.

 

“We expect more hard decisions in the future, and we will continue to look for ways to effectively and efficiently manage this agency,” Marshall L. Fisher, the state’s new corrections commissioner, said in a letter to the president of the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association. “The old way of doing business is no longer a viable option.”

 

But for the dozens of counties and municipalities that rely on prisoner labor collectively worth tens of millions of dollars each year, the so-called old way has been a fiscal lifeline for public needs and wants. Here in Pearl River County, where about 55,000 people live near the Louisiana border, state inmates launder jail uniforms, repair Sheriff’s Department vehicles and collect litter from roadsides. They also clean certain high school athletic facilities and government buildings, and assist with local events, like the Blueberry Jubilee. The state pays the county $20 a day per prisoner to house inmates in its jail.

 

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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