[PRISONACT] AL - Feeding inmates on $1.08 a day

----- Original Message ----- From: Sandrine Ageorges

Feeding inmates on $1.08 a day

11/23/03 CARLA CROWDER News staff writer

It arrives dehydrated. Just add water and boil.

The multicolored dish is the centerpiece of Tuesday lunch at Kilby
Prison, and one of the many mysterious items that Food Service
Director M.A. Warren serves to cut costs.

He can feed a prisoner on $1.08 a day. That's three meals, two on
Sundays and holidays. It's another reason Alabama's prison costs
are the lowest in the country, $9,100 per inmate per year.

Prisons in surrounding states can't touch Alabama's food frugality.
Statewide, Alabama spends 91 cents per prisoner per day on meals.
Mississippi spends $1.75 per day, Georgia $1.55 and Tennessee $2.60.

A few hours at Kilby provide a lesson in running prisons on the
cheap.

Prisoners chop wood, cut grass, grow vegetables, unload trucks,
paint, sweep, mop and staff the kitchen. When new prisoners arrive
on buses, old-timers are there to organize paperwork, take photos,
cut hair and assist in delousing.

"They're being paid by being housed and fed," Administrative Lt.
Victor Napier said. "You would imagine what the budget would be if
we had free-world people for all these jobs."

The prize jobs at Kilby, the only jobs that pay, are in the printing
plant. Machines click and clatter, and a heavy ink smell hangs in
the air. About 90 inmates print stacks and boxes of state documents,
from police training manuals to seals and decals for state agencies
- government jobs paying 15 cents to 25 cents an hour.

By comparison, Mississippi prisoners earn 30 cents to $5.15 an hour
at various jobs.

Tennessee pays unskilled inmates who clean the prisons and do laundry
34 cents to 50 cents an hour. Skilled industry jobs pay on average
$1 an hour.

Georgia pays nothing.

`Permanent party':

Kilby print shop workers are "permanent party" prisoners, as opposed
to the majority of Kilby's population who pass through this place
just east of Montgomery, get inspected and classified, then transferred
to other prisons after a few months.

Worker Charles Wentz, 73, who uses thick bifocals and a cane, has
been in prison since 1965 for a murder in Calhoun County.

"When I first come, it was 160 people in permanent party," Wentz
says, his face sunken and his voice gravely from years of cigarettes.
Now he shares space with close to 500.

For years, Wentz drove a tractor on the Kilby farm. Then a change
in state policy banned prisoners convicted of "heinous" crimes from
jobs outside the institution with little supervision.

Evidence of thrift drifts through this maze of bare-metal gates and
razor wire, cinderblock buildings and sheet metal warehouses. The
floors are bare concrete. The paint flakes. Prisoners wear uniforms
sewn by other prisoners. They sleep in beds built by other prisoners.

The honor dorm, where Wentz lives, is the nicest. It has the only
library books in the prison, and prisoners maintain rose bushes
outside.

Otherwise, the only reading materials at Kilby are donated Bibles,
and legal books required by law.

Napier, a 23-year veteran of the Department of Corrections, chuckles
when he thinks about the public's accusations of Cadillac prisons.

Paint is high on his wish list. He waited five months during rainy
season for rain jackets for officers who work outdoors.

But Napier's priority, if money were available, would be classes.

"I'd want to give them more education. Basically, all we're doing
here is warehousing them," he said.

Nothing to do:

Kilby houses 1,100 prisoners is a place built in 1969 for 440. Other
Alabama prisons are equally crowded. Instead of getting classified
and passing through to their permanent prisons, inmates get stuck
here for months with nothing to do.

Prisoner Kenneth Lebeaux, 24, is here for possession of marijuana.
A Mobile judge has ordered him to complete drug treatment and obtain
a high school equivalency certificate to shorten his five-year
sentence. Neither is available at Kilby, where he's been since Sept.
25.

"I'm very energetic," Lebeaux said. But he has no access to outside
recreation, or jobs other than cleaning up the dorm. "Weights are
off limits unless you're permanent."

Kilby does have an outside weight-lifting cage, and basketball and
volleyball courts. All are funded through canteen and snack bar
revenues.

"Taxpayers do not pay for TVs or sporting equipment," Napier said.
"It's paid for by the inmates."

Snack bar:

During mealtimes, the prison opens a snack bar. Inmates wishing to
bypass "chicken explosion" or "meat patty" buy microwaveable
sandwiches, soups and ice cream. More money for the prison. In
addition to the snack bar, there's a canteen that takes in $1 million
a year, said canteen manager Heath McKinley.

The canteen stocks items ranging from 5-cent Atomic Fireball candy
to Poli-Grip to Elmer's Glue to thermals. Prices are typical of a
convenience store. Spam is $2.19. A honey bun, always a hot seller,
is 58 cents. Banana Boat sunscreen, SPF 30, is $5.78, popular with
inmate farmers.

Prisoners must buy nearly all of their own personal items, except
soap and deodorant.

The health department has asked Kilby Warden Terry McDonnell to
replace mattresses more often then he does. But at $40 to $50 each,
tape works pretty well for repairs.

"It's getting more and more frustrating trying to do more and more
with less and less," McDonnell said.

Contributes to budget:

The Department of Corrections raises a significant portion of its
own budget. Last year, it contributed $50 million to its $300 million
budget.

Furniture, print shop products, farm products and other Correctional
Industries items made through cheap inmate labor raised most of the
money.

Prisoners and their families also pay more than other Alabamians
to talk on the phone. Local calls from the prison cost $3. Long-distance
calls cost $1.25 plus 15 cents to 30 cents a minute, usually closer
to 30 cents, said Clark Bruner, spokesman for the Public Service
Commission, which approves the rates.

That makes a 15-minute call $5.75.

Phone charges raise $6 million a year for the prison system, officials
said.

Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell, who's been on the job less
than a year after holding the same position in Tennessee, acknowledges
these funding methods are unreliable.

Income to be gone:

The parole board is expected to release hundreds of work-release
inmates, who are some of the cheapest to house because the prison
system keeps part of their paychecks. That work-release income will
be gone.

"I don't think we can be held accountable for raising X number of
dollars to operate these facilities, when I don't have control over
how we're going to raise that money," Campbell said.

Conditions were worse at Kilby as recently as this summer. But
transfers to a private prison in Tutwiler, Miss., reduced the
population by more than 100.

The Mississippi prison is run by Corrections Corporation of America,
a Tennessee-based for-profit company known for saving states money
by housing inmates more cheaply than the states can. But not even
CCA can beat Alabama's $9,100-per-inmate annual cost.

CCA is charging the state $27.50 a day, just over $10,000 a year.

http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/106958302593231.xml

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