Inmate Workforce Steering Committee

Report prepared by Albemarle County Sheriffs Office 5/24/2010

Background Not long ago, Public Defender Jim Hingeley heard Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding interviewed on the radio about his desire to see our community expand its inmate work forces so as to mirror a successful program in Norfolk. When Harding served on the State Board of Juvenile Justice with Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe, he was introduced to McCabes achievements of the previous ten years. Norfolk had enrolled over 40,000 inmates through the program and found it to be very popular and a win-win for both the inmate and the community. The community saves money and the inmate is better situated and prepared for reintegration. Before the radio interview, Harding had briefed the Jail Board on Norfolks programs and visited the Norfolk Jail with Charlottesville-Albemarle County Jail Superintendent Colonel Ronald Matthews. Hingeley suggested that he and Harding form a steering committee to research the possibility of expanding the inmate workforce. Both men are members of a sub-committee of the Thomas Jefferson Community Justice Board (CCJB), now in the process of studying ways to reduce overcrowding at the jail, and Harding is vice-chair of the Jail Board. They thought that the steering committee might focus on the inmate workforce issue and bring research and draft proposals forward to the CCJB Jail sub-committee. As the group moved forward they would keep key members of both groups apprised. The following are excerpts from efficiency studies done recently in the City and County, which speak to the underutilization of inmate workforces:
Report of The University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, 2009
The City is presently missing an opportunity to utilize inmate labor from the regional jail...It is recommended that as this program evolves, the City should explore the opportunity to increase jail staff capacity specifically to support one or more full-time inmate labor crews to the City. Such a program can reduce the current reliance on part time,

seasonal and/or contract labor and can provide additional cost-effective labor resources to enable the City to undertake labor-intensive tasks for which it does not presently have capacity.
Review was initiated in the spring of 2008 by a request from the Albemarle County Government to the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute in the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. From the report:
last eight years, the Inmate Workforce has provided the City of Norfolk an estimated cost savings of $25,000,000.

The department (Parks) has employed strategies designed to bring about efficiencies, such as use of shared vehicles, minimizing trips for supplies, moving mowing from every two weeks to once a month where possible, and retaining flexibility. They have also sought to step up their use of inmates from the Regional Jail to help with maintenance. These are very innovative approaches, and staff is commended. The inmate program should result in significant savings. Consider increasing the use of inmate labor through the existing agreement with the County Regional Jail. Consider use of inmate labor for maintenance of school grounds when school is not in session. Benchmark with other communities, such as Chesterfield County in Virginia, that use inmate labor for school-based facilities.

Actions to Date Over the past several months, many interviews have been conducted by phone and in person and four meetings have taken place. At the last meeting the committee felt it was time to put its findings into a document to be distributed to various board members. Harding will meet with CCJB Chairman Chief Tim Longo to discuss inviting Sheriff McCabe to come up to do a presentation and address any concerns our local criminal-justice stakeholders might have. In the days following the Norfolk Sheriffs Office presentation we hope to have discussion and feedback from everyone concerned and to move forward with final recommendations and implementation. It is very clear to committee members that this must be a participatory and inclusive process, with all local criminal-justice stakeholders and the community involved in the improvement of the current system. Current Status/Future Possibilities Inmate Workforce (Local-Government Supervised)
Current Status -- On an average day Albemarle County Parks utilizes

one to two inmates; City Sheriffs Office has one and County Sheriff one (warm weather only)
Projected Need -- Pat Mullaney (County Parks Supervisor) reports that a

few years ago the county received grant money from the Dave Matthews Band, and used it to purchase a crew-cab pickup truck specifically for carrying inmates working for the county. The county also added a supervisor (Terry Hughes) to oversee their work. He is disappointed that he has only one to two inmates available for work each day, and feels that he could use at least ten, and if that worked out possibly fifteen or twenty. Hughes reported having mostly good experiences with the inmates, and would like to see them clearing trails, painting, doing maintenance and equipment repair, etc. George

Shadman (County Director of General Services) agrees with Mullaney. Joe Letteri (County Schools General Services) says he would be interested in having inmates work in the summer months on various forms of maintenance. He says he can use four right now mowing grass and weed eating. He is aware that state law prohibits convicted felons from working on school grounds, so that even if the schools administration approved he would have to be more selective in choosing who would be allowed to work on school property. Brian Daly (City Parks/Recreation Director), Lawson (City Streets/Sidewalk Maintenance), and Lance Stewart (City Facilities Manager) all saw a place for the inmate workforce in their operations if certain specifics could be worked out. Lawson felt that weekend work was also possible.

Actions Needed -- Sergeant McLaughlin (committee member and Work Release Coordinator at the jail) estimates that every day there are approximately twenty inmates at the jail who under current policy guidelines would be eligible to serve on non-guarded /governmentsupervised work crews. The problem is that, lacking incentive, not many volunteer to do so. A few years ago, Virginia changed its goodtime policy. Instead of earning good time you receive it on the front end and lose it only if you break the rules. To restore incentive, Norfolk judges have agreed to credit the current minimum-wage hourly rate toward an inmates court costs and fines (Norfolk sheriff Major Mike OToole says this is currently $7.25). In addition, Norfolk will recommend someone for home electronic monitoring faster if he shows a proven track record of being a good worker, and will possibly assist him in finding employment. In Albemarle County we need a similar system of rewards. And the policy should be revisited with an eye toward expanding eligibility in regard to prior record. Now, the rule is that anyone convicted of drug distribution can never be eligible for the workforce. This could be relaxed to exclude only those convicted within the past five years, for example. The policy guideline that excludes anyone sentenced to more than two years might be changed, for example, to state that one is not eligible until one has less than twenty-four months remaining to serve.

OAR provided the current community service contract that is used in Albemarle and Charlottesville. Offenders are credited with $8.00 toward their court obligation for every hour worked. Here is a copy of that contract:

Client Community Service Contract

Thank you for your willingness to assist your community by performing community service. We recognize that part of your motivation involves paying back all or a part of your court cost obligation. While your court costs will be credited $8.00 for every hour of community service work, we also hope you will gain personal satisfaction knowing that you are contributing to building or maintaining your (our) community. We also hope you will gain job skills, references, and possibly employment out of this experience. As with any job, planning and coordination of efforts is an important part of completing any task and involves other peoples time. Community service work typically requires making a commitment to complete any job you begin. We hope you will value this commitment, recognizing that leaving a task incomplete or poorly done means additional work for someone else later and defeats the purpose of this opportunity. We want this to be a positive experience for all involved, and we ask that you treat others time with the same respect you would treat your own.

Your participation in this program is voluntary. At the same time, community service sites reserve the right to terminate you from the job site immediately if there are any problems relating to your community service, and if you are requested to leave, you must do so immediately and report to your monitoring agent (OAR, Probation and Parole, etc.) By signing this contract, you agree to the following conditions: 1. I will report to my community service site properly attired and ready to work, without being under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or prescription medications that will affect my ability to work. 2. I will report to the job site punctually at the agreed upon time. 3. I will maintain a positive attitude towards all those around me and work cooperatively to complete the task at hand to the best of my ability. 4. I will report to my supervisor at the end of my work shift to let him or her know I have completed my task(s). 5. I will be responsible for making sure that the paperwork to document my hours is properly completed, which includes: Getting the paperwork to my supervisor before the job starts, picking up the paperwork from my supervisor, and delivering the paperwork to my monitoring agent in a timely fashion.

As an interesting side note, Harding was talking with the inmate who washes the Sheriffs Office vehicles. The inmate said he had $2,500 in court costs and fines due to three probation violations. He was working just to get some fresh air, but believed that many more inmates would sign up if

incentives were in place. He also pointed out that he was required to pay all costs and fines before he could get his drivers license back, which made it much harder to get a job.
From Norfolk Sheriffs Office Web Site:

The Norfolk Sheriffs Office Inmate Workforce Program provides free labor and equipment assistance for City of Norfolk Departments, Civic Leagues, and 501 Non-Profit Organizations. The Inmate Workforce provides full landscaping services and cleanup assistance for the following city departments or sites: Norfolk Cemeteries, Fire Department, Parking Division, Public Works, School Bus Garage, Scope, Water Treatment Facilities, and the Zoo. Major city events assisted each year are Harborfest, Festevents, and city parades. A total of 153 civic leagues and nonprofit organizations received assistance from our Inmate Workforce Program in 2008. Our trash pickup program for civic leagues collected over 11,800 bags which equates to over 393 tons of trash in 2008. Inmate Workforce offenders provided 231,400 free labor hours for the city of Norfolk in 2008. Using $7.90 an hour for labor costs and $41.13 a day for average jail cost, the Inmate Workforce provided the taxpayers of Norfolk a savings of $2,310,000 in 2008. In the last eight years, the Inmate Workforce has provided the City of Norfolk an estimated cost savings of $25,000,000 Inmate Workforce (Under Jail Supervision) Current Status -- The jail has one workforce that operates on a daily basis during the week under guard. The inmates normally remove trash from roadways in the entrance corridors of the City. This winter they helped with some snow removal. On an average day there are four inmates with a maximum of five allowed to participate, so as to stay within the policy of no more than one guard per five inmates. The incentive for the inmates to work is payment of $3.00 per day. Projected Need -- All of the supervisors and department heads interviewed said that there would be countless tasks that might be performed if the jail provided inmates and supervision. Actions Needed -- The one small workforce in current operation was originally fully funded by a private citizen, Coran Capshaw. At present it is government funded, and Colonel Matthews says it cannot be expanded without adding additional manpower to his organization. It may be interesting to note that Norfolk pays for additional manpower by bidding contracts at a lower rate than the private sector or government and uses the revenue to pay for guards and equipment. In Hardings interviews with city and county supervisors, Brian Daily mentioned that the city has one contract out for mowing a cemetery. More research and out-of-the-box thinking is required of both governments to see if possibilities exist for cost savings in this area, and our goal is to engage the

University of Virginia and the business community as a whole in this part of the process.
Norfolk currently has contracts to perform various types of work, from mowing in all public cemeteries, to storm-water-drain clean up, to cleaning Old Dominion University sports stadiums. They used to win large contracts for cleaning up interstates, until Governor Kaine changed how VDOT put out bids. Weekender Program (Supervised by Guards or Government)

Current Status -- Colonel Matthews reports that the Jail normally makes room
every weekend for around thirty additional inmates to serve weekend time. These are almost all low-risk offenders who come in on Friday afternoon and go back into the community on Monday morning. Projected Need -- Pat Mullaney has said he feels the county can find at least one major project a month to be done on weekends. He said that a few years ago he bid out the re-decking of piers at Chris Green Lake. The lowest estimate was $32,000. He used inmates to do the labor and came in at $8,000, saving taxpayers $24,000. This is an area that suggests further consideration. Actions Needed -- Norfolk judges allow the majority of these types of offenders to report to supervised work sites where they put in at least eight hours of work on