At those facilities, hundreds of inmates dust off working systems, melt down motherboards to recover precious metals and break down systems for valuable parts. Everything is sold, and the FPI keeps the cash to pay its own bills. Larry Novicky, who manages the computer-recycling program for FPI, makes no apologies for the agency's actions. Plus, the law requires the agency to cover its own costs, so it has to make money somehow.
Sales revenues go toward covering the cost of running a prison factory.
FPI has had to scramble to meet its goal of employing 20 percent of a federal prison population that has grown from 24,000 in 1980 to more than 130,000 today. The federal prison population is expected to hit 200,000 in 2006. FPI has recycled over 300 million pounds of hardware since the computer equipment program began in 1997. FPI admits that not all the computer equipment it receives is fit for the scrap pile. Its flagship recycling operation at the federal prison in Marianna, Florida, has been selling whole systems and parts directly to the public since 1997.