When State House newspaper reporters move back into their renovated digs in two weeks, they are supposed to get new workstations manufactured by Maryland Correctional Enterprises, a $51-million-a-year self-supporting business employing 1,900 prisoners around the state.
Gross sales, fiscal 2008: 51.5 million
Net profit: 3 to 5 percent
Employees: 1,890 inmates (out of about 23,000 in state prisons)
Business units: 34 plants or service centers at 10 correctional institutions
Most visible products: license plates, furniture in every state office, government printing jobs, state and federal flags
Most unusual products: meatballs, sausages, hot dogs, bologna, scrapple and pizza; scrub brushes of all shapes and sizes
Catalog: mce.md.gov
Most of the furniture, cabinets and bookshelves seen around state offices are built by prison labor, from high-end polished wooden executive desks to rugged college dormitory furnishings and sturdy bunk beds for state mental hospitals.
Furniture sold to the state, local governments and nonprofit groups — the only organizations allowed to buy prison products — makes up half the revenues for MCE, according to Stephen Shiloh, chief executive officer since 1991 for the agency called State Use Industries until 2005.
Desks, chairs and cubicles from top of the line to bare-bones utilitarian take up more half of MCE’s 207-page catalog. But it also includes printing, signs, binding, office supplies and bulk, institutional meats processed at its Hagerstown packing plant, as well as multiple sizes of the work clothes and Maryland and American flags seen all over the state, sewn by female inmates who work double shifts at a plant in Jessup.
More stability, less recidivism “We’re the most sought-after job in the prison system,” Shiloh said. Quality, salable goods are the ultimate products — MCE is No. 9 among U.S. prison industries in gross receipts. But the purpose of the agency is to provide inmates with training and job skills that they can use after they’re released, as well as reducing prison idleness. It “helps keep the institutions stable,” Shiloh said, in addition to promoting a “work ethic.”
The benefits include a much lower recidivism rate among inmates who work in MCE plants at least a year. A study found that those inmates returned to jail at less than half the rate of other prisoners — about 22 percent, Shiloh said.
To work at MCE, a prisoner must have at least a high school diploma or a General Educational Development degree. Most inmates have less schooling than that, and MCE employment can be an incentive to get the education, Shiloh said. The prisoners make about $150 a month that they can spend, save or send to their families.
There are success stories right at MCE headquarters in Jessup, where 10 to 15 former inmates are now state employees. Among them is Mark Rowley, the fiscal director for the agency, a Washington, D.C., native who served 15 years for second-degree murder and began his accounting career as a clerk in the upholstery plant in Hagerstown, where he spent 10 years.
“It has made transition back to society so much easier,” Rowley said. The productive jobs in prison help increase the prisoner’s “self-worth” and teach them “respect, restraint and responsibility.”
“I met a few guys that never worked a job before,” he said.
Marketable skills Thomas Lane, a graphic designer for MCE’s marketing department, said he spent “10 years, three months and 25 days” in prison for drug possession.
“It’s not just training, but hands-on skills to enter into productive society,” said Lane, 40, a Baltimore native who learned graphics while incarcerated.
Training for marketable skills is one of the reasons MCE is continually upgrading its equipment, said Maj. Rusty Hyatt, manager of the Jessup furniture manufacturing plant with 202 inmates on its payroll.
Once prisoners built furniture with hand tools; now the plant is also equipped with “computer numerically controlled” routers that can cut, drill and rout large pieces of wood and laminate.
“If we don’t stay competitive with the private sector, we can’t keep up with what we’re doing,” said Hyatt, 59, who has been a correctional officer for 30 years. The equipment not only keeps costs in line with industry standards, but it also provides prisoners with the most up-to-date job skills.
“Math is very important operating this equipment,” Hyatt said.
Next door at the license plate shop, the final step, the stamping of the letters and numbers on laminated plates, is still done using heavy dies changed by hand. “We’re a little slow this week,” said Capt. Larry Satterfield, largely because vehicle sales are down and some of the correctional officers needed to supervise the 74 workers were on leave.
Hyatt said the plants were also trying to produce more green products.
“We’re doing as much as we can to make ourselves as environmentally friendly as we can,” he said.
“At the governor’s request,” Shiloh said MCE was also getting involved in Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts. In a partnership with Anne Arundel Community College, the inmates will grow and plant shoreline grasses coming out of a newly completed greenhouse in Hagerstown. Prisoners also made 1,000 oyster cages for growing spat.
Click here to read Len Lazarick’s interview with inmate Spencer Hurst-Bey.
