Posted: 5/5/04
By MaryHelen Swanson
Learning job skills such as going to work every day and staying on the job are some of the most important lessons an inmate at the Minnesota Correctional Facility - Rush City will take with him when he walks out the doors. And many inmates at the Rush City prison will be leaving some day.
At a recent meeting of the prison community advisory board, Warden Robert Feneis said working inside the prison is basically more beneficial for the job habits learned than the actual work skills involved in making a product.
Feneis and prison industries director Gene Aitkens talked with the community group about keeping the prisoners busy and about the type of industries that go on inside razor-wired borders.
At Rush City, approximately 425 of the 1,000 inmates are involved in either a work program or educational program.
Feneis said the prison is trying to get more offenders occupied. At previous meetings of this group, the warden stressed the importance of keeping inmates busy.
Aitkens told the group that MinnCor (Minnesota Corrections work program) does not get a budget from the state, so it is important that a business is established for inmate workers that will produce a product that can be sold on the market.
It needs to be a business that doesnít have a negative impact on businesses in the community.
Last year, Aitkens noted, MinnCor was self-sufficient.
The emphasis on a work program is to keep inmates busy while teaching good work habits. He said many of the young men in the prison have never had to get up in the morning and go to work on a regular basis.
Inmates participate in classroom training and can get shop experience, he said, so they can go back to the real world with skills to get a job.
The hope is that they have learned how to keep the job.
Aitkens said MinnCor tries to make the work process as much like the private sector as possible. Inmates must apply for the jobs, be interviewed and get hired, and there is procedure for dealing with those who donít show up, etc. They need to know going into the job that they canít take off for gym break or for visitors, he said.
It is difficult to keep some on the job, he noted, but he also sees self-esteem being built in men who never before realized how good it feels to stay working. And that makes him feel good, too.
Finding work for the inmates is a task. The prison wants to work with the private sector instead of competing with it. Feneis said part of the problem in finding work comes from the fact that private industries are looking for efficiency, reducing employees and going to automation.
The prison, he said, needs the opposite, manual work that will keep the men busy.
Feneis said the Rush City prison intends to increase both work and education assignments over the next quarter.
In other discussion, the community board learned that:
ï Some changes have been made in the prisonís operations due to the disturbance that required a lockdown last fall. Some plant security measures have been taken including securing washers and dryers to the wall so they cannot be used as barriers. Thresholds have been installed on segregation doors and gas ports installed in all housing units and some program rooms. The prison staff also received training on communication for safety;
ï There are no plans for expansion at Rush City and that the INS population (immigration detainees) is down to about 20, which is good because the prison needs the beds; and
ï The prison will again be participating in National Night Out August 3.
Following the meeting, Warden Feneis obtained figures of the economic impact of the prison on some of the communityís businesses as requested by one of the board members. MCF-Rush City annually pays $400,000 for electricity, $395,000 for sewer and water and $50,000 for garbage removal.
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