3,400 Prisoners Get Time Off Sentences, Stipends While Learning a Skill : State Prison Jobs--Spots in Factories Coveted by Inmates

About 3,400 California workers are being paid 20 to 80 cents an hour to make dozens of products ranging from jeans to office furniture.

The low pay isn’t so bad considering that each worker also receives free room and board, free clothing, free recreation and other services costing taxpayers $14,000 a year.

Besides that, the job experience may be their best opportunity for advancement--once they leave prison.

Ten of California’s 12 state prisons have some type of industry behind walls, and other new prisons under construction will provide many more jobs. For those that exist now, there is a waiting list.

Preparation for Release “The prison industry jobs are definitely coveted,” Bob Gore, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said recently. “There’s considerable incentive to stay busy since they lose their jobs and go back to the mainline if they don’t produce, and they get one day off their sentence for every day they work.”

The idea is to prepare convicts for life on the outside by giving them job skills that also can save money for the state.

The state’s small factories turn out 21 different products including textiles, furniture, upholstery, mattresses, shoes, wood products, license plates, signs, clothing, cleaning products and food.

This fiscal year, a $3-million profit is expected on an annual gross business of $35 million, according to Dick Murray, assistant general manager for the state’s prison industries.

About 3,400 inmates work in prison industries, or 8% of the state’s total population of almost 43,000. The percentage would be higher if the Department of Corrections had more money for machinery and supervisors.

No Controversial Work The work also must be non-controversial, unlike a recent proposal to have inmates at a new prison raise puppies for laboratory research. The Deukmejian Administration killed the plan after an outpouring of public complaints.

Gore said 64% of the total prison population is involved in some type of work or vocational training, including performance of maintenance jobs and other tasks at the prison. Non-industry inmates are paid $37.50 to $50 per month, depending upon the duration and complexity of their assignments.

Industrial workers, who receive more than that, have the prospect of saving more than $10,000--something that Murray said rarely happens.

Most convicts spend their tax-free income on cigarettes, soft drinks and other items from the canteen, as well as television sets and stereos for their cells. Some send money to their families, he said.

The prospect of employment, while steady, has some interruptions not present in the outside labor market. Frequent security lockdowns can cost the state--and prisoners--a lot of money.

Search for Weapons During lockdowns, inmates are restricted to their cells while prison officers shake down them--and their potential hiding places--for weapons manufactured in the institution’s underground industry. Prisons go to great lengths to keep workers from smuggling scrap metal and other raw materials out of factories for weapons.

At Folsom, which manufactures California’s license plates, prisoner-workers are required to pass through metal detectors as they leave the factory.

“We’re not saying industry is completely free (of weapons),” Murray said, “but most of those things come from other places. Inmates can come up with anything from toothbrush holders and wires out of beds to make knives.”

As a precaution, many mattresses manufactured in California prisons are made without inner springs. Besides limitations on products, prison factories also must steer as clear as possible from work that otherwise might be performed by private industry and union labor.

Job Protection John Henning of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, said he has been meeting with prison industry officials to reach agreement on inmate apprenticeship programs. A governor’s task force also is working on the issue, with a report expected this month.

“We want to give prisoners skills,” Henning said, “but obviously we’re opposed to work that takes jobs away from people in industry.”

The trend among government officials is to greatly expand the types and quantity of work that convicts do behind the walls, said Louis Fudge, a consultant with the Joint Legislative Committee on Prison Construction and Operation.

“It’s pointless to just lock these guys up with nothing to do,” he said. “We want to see that every inmate is involved in a full-time work-training program.”

But he said doing that will require an infusion of millions of dollars for equipment and instructors at the same time that an additional 100 convicts are going into the system each week. “There’s your problem,” he said.