Pubdate: Sun, 14 Aug 2005
Source: Anchorage Daily News (AK)
Copyright: 2005 The Anchorage Daily News
Contact:  http://www.adn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18
Author: Sarana Schell, Anchorage Daily News
Cited: Alaska Correctional Industries http://www.alaskaci.com
Cited: The National Correctional Industries Association, a nonprofit
professional association http://www.nationalcia.org
Cited: Federal Prison Industries http://www.unicor.gov
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)

PRISON PRODUCTION SEEKS MORE VISIBILITY

Like Any Business, Inmate Industries Must Make A Profit

Alaska Correctional Industries has had a low profile up until now, but
the business is looking to grow and turn a profit: The state has said
it will quit subsidizing the enterprise.

Everywhere, Cathy Kochendorfer sees things she could make better,
cheaper and in Alaska instead of China via the Lower 48.

Gym and school towels, hospital linens, promotional totes for the
weekend market in downtown Anchorage.

"Why are we not making this stuff?" Kochendorfer bemoaned. "It drives
me insane!"

Maybe because Alaska's prison industry is nearly invisible.

If you've ridden state ferries or been to Juneau's hospital or in a
state agency, without knowing you've likely seen the work supervised
by Kochendorfer and other shop managers in Alaska prisons.

Barricaded behind prison doors, Kochendorfer teaches Eagle River
inmates to inspect stitches on detailed white ferry uniforms. Juneau
inmates at Alaska Sterile Laundry wash sheets for hospital patients.
Seward inmates turn planks of A1 oak-veneer plywood into bookcases.

One of few signs is a tag on thick blue fleece blankets for Alaska
ferries, stitched with a picture of a ship, "alaska marine highway"
and "ALASKA CORRECTIONAL INDUSTRIES."

ACI has had a low profile because its mission was to give inmates
skills through meaningful work, which helped prisons run smoothly and
prisoners find jobs in the outside world.

Now ACI is looking for a whole lot more visibility.

The state said it will quit paying Kochendorfer and its other
employees who run ACI, an independent arm of the Department of
Corrections. ACI will have to meet its own payroll.

ACI is nearly breaking even, said Corrections Commissioner Marc
Antrim, after he closed three old or heavily subsidized shops, leaving
sewing, laundry and furniture.

To make ACI profitable, Antrim is looking for private partners to open
ventures in the three shuttered buildings, using cheap rent and
cheaper labor as a lure.

Ventures with private companies can seek customers beyond the state
agencies, nonprofits and wholesalers allowed to ACI's in-house shops.
Besides giving prisoners real-world experience, the private
partnership jobs pay inmates more, with a cut for ACI.

"I really want this to be successful," Antrim said.

'I DON'T HAVE TO MAKE METH'

The buzz and whine of table saws, planers and routers filled ACI's
two-story, several-thousand-square-foot furniture shop at Seward's
Spring Creek Correction Center in late July. Nearly 30 men were
cranking out 75 chairs for the state Division of Oil and Gas.

One set of metal doors clangs shut before another set grinds open in
Spring Creek.

"Prison is a negative experience," shop manager Greg Houck said. "It's
supposed to be."

To balance that, Houck aims to keep, or create, work habits and a
sense of self-esteem.

Inmates run power tools, maintain a tool shop, order materials and use
computer programs to draft plans and price quotes for customers.

Many people who apply for a position have no work history and skills
to match.

"I was amazed to the point of jaw-dropping how many guys don't know
how to use a tape measure," said middle-aged Houck. He said he spent
seven years in the military and six running a machine shop in Seward,
and expects inmates to learn every day.

"That's one of the things we're about, is teaching people they don't
have to be an idiot," Houck said. "They don't have to thump people on
the head."

Some employees discover hard work isn't so bad, to their
amazement.

" 'The only job I had was selling dope,' " Houck said he's heard. " 'I
never knew I could do anything like this,' " and " 'I don't have to
make meth for a living.' "

They are the exceptions, he said.

"For every one of those, I get 10 trying to sleep under the table,"
Houck said, pulling open a file drawer packed with files of inmates
he's fired.

Not for mistakes like cutting a board, or even lots of boards, too
short, he said. Safety and work ethic are the measuring points.

And working with others.

"Some guys don't take constructive criticism very well," Houck
observed, and likely won't last in a job. In the shop, they have to
talk.

"If they make a desk together and I say, 'Hey, this desk looks like
crap,' " Houck said, they share responsibility.

"I don't want to say 'team,' " Houck said. "It's more like a
professional courtesy situation."

BEYOND LICENSE PLATES

Seward reflects the new, streamlined ACI.

Kenai also made high-quality furniture that graces state office
buildings across Alaska, but not as efficiently, Antrim said.

"The Department of Corrections budget has subsidized each piece of
that furniture, sometimes to the tune of hundreds of dollars," Antrim
said. "It just needed to stop. We need to bring the whole system into
a more modern practice."

A new, more business-like accounting system is on the way to replace
what amounted to a checking account, a Corrections finance officer
said.

America has experimented with inmate labor since prisons appeared in
the late 1700s, according to the U.S. prison system. Alone in their
cells, inmates made shoes or polished marble. In the early 1800s,
prison factories made barrels, harnesses, clothing and furniture.
Goods were sold on the open market. Some prisons leased convict
workers. After the Civil War, the practice expanded to partially
replace slaves.

Unions and manufacturers complained, and New York limited prison sales
to the state government. Federal rules against leasing convicts led to
the first federal prisons, built with inmate help. Boat-building,
shoe-making, sewing and farming followed. Federal Prison Industries
was formed in 1934. It was to pay for itself, and had labor and
industry leaders as board members.

Efforts to keep inmates busy without offending business and labor
continue, with varying degrees of success.

In recent decades, federal and state prisons have partnered with
private companies to make and sell everything from prescription
eyewear to electronics recycling to call-center services.

Federal Prison Industries, known as Unicor, sells fence systems with
the slogan "No One Knows More About Security."

Texas inmates make air-conditioner parts and Texas flag-patterned boot
bags.

"Texas, of course, is the ultimate," Antrim said.

To avoid stepping on toes, Texas checks with chambers of commerce and
its state labor department before starting ventures. Alaska also aims
to be sensitive.

"We don't want to be taking jobs away from people," Antrim said. But
he said he's convinced there are monotonous, labor-intensive jobs that
companies couldn't afford to do in Alaska unless they had really cheap
labor. The jobs still give prisoners a wage and work habits, and
leveraging those privileges helps keep prisons more stable, said
Antrim, who said he started his career as a prison guard.

'FREE WORLD' WORK

Typically, inmates apply and interview for prison industry
jobs.

Out of nearly 3,400 Alaska prisoners, ACI employs 80 inmates in its
Eagle River sewing shop, Seward wood shop and Juneau laundry.

Unlike other Southeast laundries, ACI is big enough to quickly handle
most of the state ferry system's laundry and store it in the winter,
said port steward Mike Wilson. Wilson said ACI charges half the rate
private companies do.

Inmates make $1.40 at ACI, or less than $1 an hour in a prison job,
cooking, cleaning or doing other maintenance, Antrim said.

A second laundry business in Juneau, Alaska Sterile Laundry, is the
state's only joint venture with a private company, Alaska Laundry &
Drycleaners.

Alaska Laundry owner Neil MacKinnon employs five inmates, starting at
$7.15 an hour.

About 80 percent of their minimum-wage paychecks goes to room and
board in the prison, victims' funds, child support and ACI, but
prisoners still end up with more.

MacKinnon started working with Juneau's Lemon Creek Correctional
Center to do medical laundry some 15 years ago and has grown
accustomed to the quirks of prison labor, such as one worker being
authorized to do a job but not another.

"It's a good business deal because it works out for everyone," said
MacKinnon.

"Free world" work better helps prisoners get and hold a job after
their release, prison officials said, and gives them more money to get
an apartment and pay other expenses.

A Texas study of more than 1,000 former prisoners who had worked for a
"free world" company in the past 11 years found 88 percent were
currently working, compared with 62 percent of other released
prisoners. More than 76 percent stayed out of prison; most who were
back in had failed a drug test or other parole condition, and had not
committed a new crime.

NORDSTROM, NOT KMART

Cathy Kochendorfer's favorite mantras are "Family's most important,
and work is how you feed your family," and "We're doing Nordstrom
quality, not Kmart quality."

After a long private-sector career, the sewing-shop manager at Hiland
Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River delights in training her
employees on work ethic as well machinery and production tricks.

A white-haired woman who wears glasses and a smile, even while dealing
with a repeatedly leaky roof, she seems to spin off new product ideas
like a trailing magnetic field.

She employs 45 people, up from five when she started six years ago,
and sales are more than $500,000, up from $15,000, but she still
doesn't quite break even, so she constantly hounds customers to order
new products.

Like the blue fleece blankets ACI now makes for the ferry
system.

"They're gorgeous," said satisfied customer Wilson of the Alaska
Marine Highway System. Standard blankets are too wide or too long for
ferry bunks, but Kochendorfer's are custom-made.

"Her blankets fit much better," Mike Wilson said. "I'd buy more if I
could afford 'em."

Besides regular work like making prison uniforms and the Alaska ferry
work, she picks up smaller contracts like sewing dog booties for the
Iditarod that help keep workers busy.

Her employees make the pace worthwhile, Kochendorfer
said.

Like Maggie Fairbanks.

"You guys work me to death," Kochendorfer teased Fairbanks, 24,
Heather Simas, 31, and Judy Lopez, 43, as they visited with
Kochendorfer and a reporter. Hazy July afternoon sunshine filtered
into Kochendorfer's office, doors at each end open to separate men's
and women's shops.

"The feeling is mutual," Fairbanks retorted, to laughs.

But Simas and Lopez said as first-timers in prison, working for
Kochendorfer keeps them sane.

"Work is all I pretty much know," Lopez said.

Fairbanks said her ACI job is the first of her life.

"I've been here probably 50 times. The guards call me 'Misdemeanor
Maggie,' " Fairbanks said. Her dark eyes and oval face laugh, then
slide down and sideways, like she's tired, then snap back again to
smile.

"I've been fired twice, but I'm a good worker so they bring me
back."

Besides applying for ACI this time in, Fairbanks said she took GED
classes. She has a daughter now and is putting stepping-stones in
place for when she gets out soon.

Kochendorfer has done what she can to instill the
quality-as-professional-courtesy
concept.

As an inspector, Fairbanks sometimes had to reject work by her
friends.

"I felt like I was a nitpick," she said, "but it reflects on all of
us."

Satisfied customer Wilson of the Alaska Marine Highway System
appreciates the professionalism Kochendorfer brings. He started buying
uniforms from her about six years ago.

The long, button-up white shirt with epaulettes and pocket details is
worn by stewards who make beds, clean toilets and generally tidy the
ships.

"She found better fabric and she tailored it for a better fit and a
better price," Wilson said.

Kochendorfer said her own career spanned years sewing women's
clothing, backpacks, hot air balloons and more before starting a line
of quilted women's accessories she sold to Nordstrom and others.

She pulls on that knowledge and volume discounts to find savings. She
orders chef-coat fabric for the ferry and for an Alaska kitchen-wear
wholesale client at the same time.

The $17.50 she charges Wilson for the steward shirt reflects a 20
percent mark-up, Kochendorfer said, though that's shrinking with
rising fuel and fabric costs.

She's looking at raising her prices.

There's always some extra cost, she said, like the $1,500
heat-transfer machine she bought to put designs and text on bags for a
state children's health campaign.

Delighted to be a part of the effort, she suggested handles too short
to fit over a child's head as an added safety feature.

Now she wants to put the heat-transfer machine to more
use.

"I want to do the T-shirts, I want to do polar fleece, made in
Alaska," Kochendorfer said.

Did she mention the shop is certified to use the Made in Alaska
logo?

"I keep trying to find people that have ideas that want to go into
business," Kochendorfer said. "It's really hard to find people like
that. All I want to do is the manufacturing."

FOR MORE: Alaska Correctional Industries http://www.alaskaci.com

The National Correctional Industries Association, a nonprofit
professional association http://www.nationalcia.org

Federal Prison Industries http://www.unicor.gov
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin