CO Inmates Reeling In Profits
Sure, they’d rather be fishing.But that’s not an option when you’re locked up 24/7. Instead, inmates serving time for sexual assault have to be content making fishing rods. There aren’t many trout streams in prison. Story, with additional photos, in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Rods start at $80, but many of the custom bass-fly-spin-salmon-crank rods sell for $600 to $1,200 through the shop at Arrowhead Correctional Center, a minimum-security prison in Fremont County.
“It’s a coveted job,” inmate Mark Iverson said.
And time-consuming. It takes 80 to 100 hours to make some rods. The shop makes about 100 composite and 10 bamboo poles a year. The inmates also repair rods and tie flies.
For the prison, it’s cheap labor. For the inmates, who earn a basic pay of about 60 cents a day, it’s a chance to learn a skill — and to dream.
The rod shop started three years ago at the suggestion of an Arrowhead inmate. It is one of 55 work programs managed by Colorado Correctional Industries, or CCI, a self-funded division of the Colorado Department of Corrections.
About 1,700 inmates are employed in CCI programs. Inmates make credenzas, dorm furniture, file cabinets, conference tables, clothes, linens, trash bags and car tags. Some milk cows, train dogs and tame wild horses.
The programs have the double benefit of making money and reducing inmate idleness. “It’s to teach inmates and work inmates,” Arrowhead greenhouse manager Dave Block said.
“It is a management tool; they like working for us,” CCI director Steve Smith said. And taxpayers should like it, too.
“Last year, we generated $65 million in revenue,” Smith said. “It amounts to saving taxpayers about $7.5 million a year in supervision and programming costs.”
Last year’s revenue produced a profit of $250,000, which was reinvested in CCI programs.
“We are always looking for new ideas,” Smith said. “The more inmates working, the better the department likes it. We could easily employ another 2,000 if we had the programs.”
At Arrowhead, about 115 inmates work in greenhouse programs that include raising tilapia fish and running a flower shop. About 10 inmates work in the rod shop.
“Everything is top-of-the-line and handmade,” Block said. “From fiddleback maple to canary wood, there are about 25-plus different kinds of wood. We have over 1,000 different styles of tapers.”
Most of the rods are sold via mail-order from the prison Web site. But they also can be found in some unlikely places, such as the gift shop at St. Thomas More Hospital in Canon City.
“The last thing I ever figured was they would sell fishing poles at a hospital,” Block said. “We sold 10 so far in the last three months.”
Fishing is a new trade for Jack Serbis, 50, a cowboy serving 10 years to life. “They had to teach me from scratch. They have high standards. I spend a lot of time redoing things,” he said. “It’s a productive way to spend your time. It gives you time to think.”
David Farber, 38, was a construction worker before locked up on a 21-year sentence. “I like the freedom to be creative. I’m learning a trade I can take out of here,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I’m very ashamed for what I did.”
Before he moved to Colorado and was incarcerated, Iverson did a lot of fishing in the Seattle area. “Even though I can’t be there, I can still be part of it, too,” he said.
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