Working behind bars

bout 15 years ago, a 20-year-old inmate was in the Blair County Prison for the third time when he requested to work in the facility's kitchen.

"He said he realized he wasn't going down the correct path in life," Warden Michael Johnston said. "He liked the kitchen job so much that he asked the warden at the time to further his education in cooking. He's never been in trouble since. He works in local restaurants as a chef. Basically, he got his start at the Blair County Prison."

The pay isn't high - ranging from only 19 cents an hour for unskilled jobs at state correctional institutions like Smithfield, Huntingdon and Rockview to $1 at Centre County Prison and $1.50 at Bedford County Prison. But local officials contend the prisoners, facilities and counties all reap the benefits.

"The inmates actually love to do the work," Johnston said. "They come in here, [and] they eventually get tired of not doing anything. They beg us to give them something to do. I could double the amount of jobs. We don't ever have a shortage of workers."

In addition to general cleaning or work in the kitchen and laundry rooms, inmates at Clearfield County Prison assist with a garden program in the summer and operate the facility's recycling center, Warden Samuel Lombardo said.

"All my work is done by the inmates," Lombardo said. "Idle time causes trouble. The more we keep them busy, the better it is. These places are expensive to run. People are doing time - they should pay for what they've done and should help the community."

Inmates at Blair County work mostly on cleaning detail crews or specialty jobs such as uniform sewing. Centre County's inmates work mostly in kitchen, laundry and maintenance or work-release opportunities in the community.

At the Huntingdon County Jail, inmates spend a lot of work hours cleaning, doing kitchen work and laundry. Some do maintenance or cleaning outside the prison walls.

Inmates at SCI Huntingdon help with many community projects in the area, especially with smaller, nonprofit organizations. They recently updated the lighting, painting and flooring at a local community center, something that wouldn't have been possible without their help, Public Information Officer Connie Green said.

"The big thing for the inmates is it keeps them occupied," Centre County Prison Warden Edward DeSabato said. "On our side, it maintains the building. That's what keeps the county prisons running - inmate labor."

SCI Smithfield Public Information Officer Lisa Hollibaugh said most of the work done at the Huntingdon-area facility is done by inmates.

"Basically it keeps the facility moving," she said.

Huntingdon County Jail Warden Duane Black said the work does much more than simply keep inmates busy and out of trouble.

"It might give them a little bit of structure," Black said. "You're dealing with individuals [and] some of them have never worked a day in their lives."

Black said that because his facility is so small - with a maximum capacity of less than 50 prisoners at one time - and the pay is so low - between 50 and 75 cents a day for work - county savings isn't really affected by working inmates.

Lombardo said that by instilling skills in inmates and commending them for good work to build up their self-esteem, Clearfield County sees the biggest savings after a prisoner's release.

"It's a big savings to the county if we can get these people in the work force and also stop crimes," he said.

Jeff Rackovan, public information officer at SCI-Rockview, said that facility focuses on offering skills in a particular vocation for the 85 to 95 percent of prisoners who eventually will be released.

"We are trying to provide them with an employable skill, and the best way to do that is to teach them a particular skill and to enhance that teaching with certification," he said. "That's our goal, so that they don't come back."

SCI-Huntingdon Public Information Officer Connie Green said the more than 1,800 inmates employed through the prison allow community organizations to complete projects too expensive for their budgets.

"In the short run and the long run, it saves money," Green said.

Bedford County commissioners have insisted in recent weeks that inmates at the local facility are paid up-to-date. As of this week, prisoners were still owed at least two months' worth of their $1.50 a day pay, Chaplain Myrl Musselman said.

"They're not upholding their end of the bargain," Musselman said of the leaders, adding that it makes it harder for prisoners to have faith in the system and to go back into society with a positive attitude and new skills. "They're hindering that process."

William DiMascio, executive director at the Pennsylvania Prison Society, said the lack of payments makes it impossible for prisoners many of them impoverished to purchase basic needs such as toiletries. He said it also means the county is not setting a good example.

"I don't care how low they are, the county has an obligation to pay its debts," DiMascio said. "That's not setting a very good example. You have to wonder what happens when those folks actually get out of prison. Do they adopt the same attitude?"

While there's no known law that requires timely payments, DiMascio said it's an "unwritten agreement between county and prisoners to do some type of work in exchange for an amount of pay."

The prison experience should be a rehabilitative, corrective one, DiMascio said.

"We ought to be helping people learn to function as we'd like them to function."

All of the other institutions reached by the Mirror said their prisoners' pay was up-to-date.