Under the supervision of armed correctional officers, medium security prisoners worked more than 1 million hours for the Department of Transportation last year. Prisoners develop a work routine and provide a workforce that tackles demanding jobs. Each year, the Departments of Correction and Transportation sign an agreement to put prisoners to work.
Transportation engineers assign the tasks to the prison road squads.
Then correctional officers transport the work squads to the job site, supervise them at work and return them to prison at the end of the workday. Squads from 29 prisons worked a total of 1,107,458 hours in 1997. Crews from three prisons worked more than 100,000 hours in 1997. Road squad inmates from Pender Correctional Institution worked 125,497 hours. Crews from Columbus Correctional Institution worked 107,093 hours and Brown Creek Correctional Institution 100,859 hours.