By Greg Kendall-Ball
Abilene Reporter-News
TAYLOR COUNTY, Texas — A decade ago an inmate at the Taylor County Jail likely knew how to do basic manual labor. They knew how to operate a weed trimmer or a chainsaw, or how to push a wheelbarrow.
They also were likely to spend more time in jail as the wheels of justice turned a little slower.
Putting some of those inmates to work - the lowest-risk, nonviolent oenders - made sense. Prisoners could earn three days’ credit toward their sentence for each day completed on a work crew.
And the county, meanwhile, had a less-expensive alternative for getting routine maintenance and manual labor tasks completed. Taxpayers benefi ted by paying for fewer days in jail for those who met the program requirements.
Inmates are serving shorter sentences today, or are being shipped out to state prisons more quickly. The number of inmates at the Taylor County Jail is down, meaning a smaller number from which to draw eligible work crew members.
Sheri Les Bruce said 10 to 15 men qualify, on average, for work crew duties. That’s down from more than 30 just a few years ago.
Those who are eligible for the program aren’t necessarily ready and able to work.
“Before you turn an inmate loose with a chainsaw or a Weed Eater, you have to do some training,” said Stan Egger, Taylor County Commissioner for Precinct 3, who uses inmate work crews frequently.
“Now, by the time you have someone trained, they’re getting out of jail,” he said.
It’s not just training that’s lacking, Bruce said. It’s the inmate’s attitudes. “We’ve seen a generational shift in our inmate population. The days are over when inmates would show up knowing they’d be incarcerated for a few months and would want to work to reduce their time,” Bruce said.
In December a 22-year-old man assigned to a work crew jumped off the bus taking the crew back to the jail and spent nearly two hours at large.
It’s another indicator of inmate attitude, Bruce said.
“In interviews with folks who’ve walked off work crews, they said they knew they would be recaptured, but all they were thinking about was tonight, about seeing their sweetie for half a day,” Bruce said.
All the changes in the inmate population - both numbers and attitudes - have led to some changes in the way the county administers the program.
Previously, each of the county’s four precincts was assigned a work crew and a supervisor. To increase security and safety, Bruce doubled the number of officers supervising the inmates at work and halved the number of crews. Now two precincts share a crew.
“We want to protect the community, our officers and our inmates. There’s an officer safety issue with only one officer watching three to six men,” Bruce said. “We needed an extra set of eyes on these guys.” Bruce said it was the safety issue and not public outcry following the escape in December that led to the change.
“I think the majority of people out there recognize that it was an isolated incident, and that the program as a whole is a good thing,” he said.
In addition to trimming the number of crews working out in the county, inmates will no longer be used for lawn care and maintenance at the county courthouse and expo center. County Judge Downing Bolls said three unfilled positions at the Sheriff’s Office would be moved to the county maintenance department to cover those duties.
Work crews still will be used to perform a variety of tasks along county roads and at county facilities.
In the past they’ve been used for brush abatement and tree-trimming, trash pickup and the cleanup of illegal dumping sites. Certain skilled workers have worked on a crew that build the county elections office, the Juvenile Education Building and have built some of the county maintenance barns.
Egger, whose Precinct 3 covers a large swath of rural Taylor County, made heavy use of work crews in years past.
“It felt like some of the inmates were county hands - they spent more time on the work crew than off it,” Egger said.
Recently, as more and more people move into the rural areas, Egger said he’s made less use of the crews, especially around housing developments.
“I’m hesitant to use (them) in subdivisions, because even though they’ve been screened and are nonviolent, a lot of folks don’t like looking out their windows and seeing six inmates at the end of their drive,” Egger said.
The crews that are dispatched still will do road maintenance and brush abatement, and will still be used to move dirt in and out of the Taylor County Coliseum for events. “I don’t know that county residents will notice a difference with the changes,” Egger said. “We may not get as much accomplished, though, because there’s always work to be done.”
Commissioner Randy Williams, whose Precinct 1 - along with Egger’s Precinct 3 - accounts for more than half of the county, said the economic impact could be substantial.
“It’s hard to put a dollar figure on what work crews have saved the county,” Williams said. “But over the past 10 years, it has to be in the millions.
“Now, by the time you have someone trained, they’re getting out of jail.”