An innovative program in Detroit allows inmates of the city’s jail system to do their time on the farm rather than up the river. And all the produce raised is donated to charities that feed the needy.
Corrections officials say that participants in the Weekend/Weekday Alternative for Misdemeanants program save the city more than $1 million a year by reducing costs to keep people in jail, according to an article by Jennifer Chambers in The Detroit News.
“I love it out here. I like the work. These are living things just like us and I nurture them so they do well,” Scott Graham, 24, told Chambers of his work in the 5-acre garden at Springfield Oaks County Park. Graham was picked up for driving with a suspended license. Graham and the other misdemeanants work under chief gardener Linda Muiter-Carmean and grow carrots, squash, corn and herbs.
Chambers reports that Judge Michael Batchik founded the program to give nonviolent offenders — those arrested for shoplifting, first offense drunken driving and the like — an option other than doing time indoors. Those inmates who opt for field work are required to pay $15 per day to cover the costs of their supervision.
The program, which began in 2005, has produced an amazing 10,000 pounds of vegetables that are donated to the Gleaners Community Food Bank, which sends the produce to soup kitchens, food pantries and providers for the hungry.
This is ”one of the few government programs that really works,” said L. Brooks Patterson, a Springfield County official, during a speech this week at a ceremony that honored Judge Batchik and two companies that donated garden materials.
Photo courtesy of ellievanhouttes, via Flickr