By Dan Boyd
Journal Capitol Bureau
SANTA FE — Don’t be alarmed at the sight of orange jumpsuits outside the state Capitol. It’s just your tax dollars at work. For roughly a month, a New Mexico agency has been paying “low-risk” inmates from the Penitentiary of New Mexico, south of Santa Fe, a dollar an hour to move furniture, paint, help with landscaping and do other tasks at state government buildings around the capital city.
The General Services Department touts the novel arrangement as rewarding for both the state and the inmates.
“It’s been cost-effective for taxpayers,” General Services Secretary Ed Burckle said in an interview. “But we’re also pleased to help the inmates transition back into the general population.”
Only inmates convicted of nonviolent charges - such as forgery and burglary - are eligible for the program, said Corrections Department spokeswoman Alex Tomlin. Sex offenders are not allowed in.
Inmates also must be within 18 months of the end of their sentences to participate. They are monitored by a corrections officer while doing the outside work and are searched when they return to the penitentiary, Tomlin said.
Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel said the program teaches inmates job skills while helping to ready them for re-entry into civilian life. About 96 percent of the state’s inmate population eventually will be released, he said.
“We’re not sending bad offenders out into the community,” Marcantel said. “I can’t allow inmates to go from our prisons to our neighborhoods without socialization.”
He cited other benefits. “It’s good prison management to keep offenders busy,” Marcantel said.
Marcantel said the formal arrangement with the General Services Department came about after he made it known to other Cabinet secretaries in Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration that he had a willing workforce at his disposal.
Already, the inmates’ helping hands have allowed for an increase in the number of upkeep projects tackled this year by the agency’s Building Services Division, division Director George Morgan said.
Many of those projects would otherwise go untouched due to budgetary restraints, he said. In all, the Building Services Division is in charge of maintaining roughly 20 state-owned buildings in Santa Fe that encompass more than 1.5 million square feet of office space.
The division has paid slightly less than $5,000 for more than 1,200 hours logged by the inmate workers, who apply to be on a work crew and are then assigned if they pass a vetting process. That dollar amount includes the salary cost of the supervising corrections officer.
Although the current arrangement is scheduled to run through the end of this month, Burckle said he would like to see it continued. He said, for example, that he could envision using inmate labor to help move snowdrifts from state government building parking lots during winter months.
“It was a pilot program for this year, but it’s worked extremely well and we’d like to do it again,” Burckle said.
The general idea of tapping the industriousness of inmates isn’t new. The Corrections Department has an in-house work program and assigns inmates to help on highway cleanup crews. In addition, a program run by the State Forestry pays inmates from the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas to help fight wildfires.
Santa Fe defense attorney Mark Donatelli, who has been involved in state prison issues for decades, said the number of such programs has dwindled in recent years. Donatelli praised the latest arrangement.
“Any opportunities for prisoners to work in programs like this will assist them in successful reincorporation,” he said.
In the four weeks since the program was launched, no incidents have been reported and just one complaint has been filed.
That complaint apparently came from a state employee who was alarmed by seeing jumpsuit-wearing inmates walking through the parking lot of a state building, General Services Department spokesman Tim Korte said.
Copyright 2013 Albuquerque Journal