“Very serious weaknesses and failings” were found in at least 24 of 88 prisons inspected in England and Wales, with a further 19 faring only “a little better”, he says in the latest annual report. Four prisons had to be visited twice because of the seriousness of the failings.

The failure to obey the rules “could potentially place children, vulnerable prisoners, members of the public and prison staff in harm’s way and managers have been warned that they could then find themselves in an indefensible position,” Kennedy says.

He warns that in more than 50 prisons, rules designed to protect prisoners’ conversations with their lawyers were broken least year and there is no sign that the situation is improving.

He says an “alarming number” of category B local prisons appear to have very limited capacity to monitor prisoners who pose a real threat to good order and security”.

“The smuggling of drugs and illicit mobile telephones are serious problems for most prisons, irrespective of their security status, and if a serious incident were to occur, which could have been prevented through the gathering of intercept intelligence, the prison managers and staff could find themselves in an indefensible position,” Kennedy warns.

He records that in 25 prisons, 1,456 mobile phones and 797 sim cards were seized in a six-month period. The availability of such a large number of illicit phones in the prison system is a serious cause for concern because prisoners could also use them to access the internet, says Kennedy.

Part of the problem is a lack of equipment and resources, “especially when large numbers of prisoners needed to be monitored because they were considered a risk to children and are subject to harassment restrictions,” he says in his report.

In one prison, a total of 476 prisoners were deemed to need their phone calls and correspondence monitored.

“The prison service simply does not have the funding to pay for this, and I am not convinced that it would be money well spent,” Kennedy says. The failings also stemmed from a lack of “clear leadership, direction and supervision” of the monitoring staff.

The National Offender Management Service has made improvements since the inspections, including greater oversight to ensure recommendations are met, that common problems are identified and good practice shared, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said.

“We will continue to work closely with the interception commissioner and his inspectorate to improve performance in prisons and drive up standards,” he said.

David Cameron expressed regret about what he called the “systematic failings” identified in the report.

Kennedy also notes that MI5 wrongly intercepted conversations “that were subject to journalistic privilege”. The material “was not handled in accordance with the agreed procedures,” he says.

He adds: “This material has now been reviewed according to the established procedures”.

This is the first year for the garden, which is tended by residential inmates, work-release prisoners and offenders confined for substance-abuse treatment.

The operation already has donated hundreds of pounds of food to charity.

Kevin Burdick, 31, of Olathe, is one of the gardeners. He engaged in credit card fraud because of a drug addiction, he said, and is getting substance abuse treatment.

Swinging a plastic bag filled with cherry tomatoes, he said people like to sign out of the adjacent treatment center and stroll to the gardens.

“Sometimes you just need to get away,” he said.

He has watched the crops prosper — including squash, onions, peppers, cucumbers and melons. “It makes you feel good,” he said.

The inmates like helping others, but they also like eating some of the vegetables, said corrections supervisor Tom Tysver.

As for their diet otherwise, he said, “You don’t want to say it’s lower end, but the food here, it is what it is.”

Tysver helped organize the first garden, and inmates did the work. They dug, planted and weeded, and now they are harvesting.

A horse farm owner donated manure for the garden at 141 Mission Parkway. Olathe gives compost to citizens and because some inmates are from Olathe, they received some free compost.

Lisa Simkins, 43, of Kansas City, Kan., also was picking vegetables Thursday. She has a forgery conviction and is also getting drug treatment.

“Holy cow,” she said of a big cucumber she picked.

She’s helped water and weed and now pick, she said. “It’s fun; therapeutic, I guess.”

When picking ended, Tysver glanced at the surrounding grass. Someday, gardens could replace it all, he said.

But at this Sumter County facility, they’re accomplishing more than milk production. The dairy operation has resulted in thousands in savings into thousands for the S.C. Department of Corrections, which like most state agencies has been struggling with budget deficits in a tough economic climate.

The cows produce more than 500,000 gallons of milk per year, served daily to the S.C. Department of Corrections’ 24,000 inmates statewide. The milk also supplies cafeterias at the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice, with a little sold on the market in South Carolina.

But next year, the dairy will expand into a new $7 million facility that can milk 1,000 cows a day, said Bert Dew, branch chief for agriculture at the Corrections Department. The expansion will allow production of more than 2.3 million gallons per year, with the larger dairy also capable of packaging single-serve milk and juices and of producing potable water for state emergencies. The excess milk from the expanded dairy will be sold on the open market in South Carolina, Dew said.

Dairy farmers do not expect the prison’s milk sales to affect their operations, because the state’s dairies do not produce enough to satisfy the demand, said Jamie Cantrell, a field representative with the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative, which markets milk for farmers.

In fact, the Corrections Department milk is expected to save the state’s dairy producers about $200,000 per year in import costs. About 80 dairy farms operate statewide.

“Any time local milk is produced, it’s a load that doesn’t have to be hauled in from Texas or New York state,” Cantrell said.

Wateree is one of three farms in the state’s prison system. Those farms also produce eggs, vegetables, grits and corn meal that are used to feed inmates, saving nearly $600,000 a year. The Corrections Department’s daily food cost per inmate — $1.51 — is the lowest among prison systems nationwide, said Josh Gelinas, the department spokesman.

And the farms raise products such as beef cattle that are sold for cash. That money is returned to the farms so they can pay for themselves, Dew said.

At Wateree, 200 of the prison’s 700 inmates work on the farm under the supervision of professional agriculture specialists such as Dew. The inmates’ work helps hold down expenses, since they do not earn salaries. And the hard work keeps behavioral problems to a minimum, he said.

“If you work them and they work hard all day, you don’t have any trouble out of them,” he said. “They come in and go to bed.”

Besides the dairy, Wateree also produces grits, corn meal, sweet potatoes, lumber and cattle, and chicken feed.

The Corrections Department has projected that the expanded dairy will pay for itself within 10 years, said Jon Ozmint, Corrections Department director. The first 500 cows are expected to move into a new barn in January.

But Ozmint said he wouldn’t be surprised if the dairy generated enough money to recoup the expense at a faster rate, especially if the price of milk holds steady.

Once Corrections pays off its construction costs, it will use the money to pay for other expenses such as offsetting budget deficits. This year, Corrections expects to run a $10 million deficit, Ozmint said. If the dairy already was profitable, it would generate more than $1 million that could help with the shortfall.

The Corrections Department constantly evaluates the agriculture market to see which crops and livestock are profitable. A few years ago, the department dropped hog farming because it did not make money, Ozmint said. But it added a large egg production facility.

“That’s why we focus on eggs and milk, because they’ve always been winners for us,” he said.

The new dairy is being built mostly by prison labor. Inmates are grading the foundation and building two barns. A private contractor has been hired to build the milking parlor, said John Harmon, chief of facilities management for the Corrections Department.

On Monday, inmates drove bulldozers and backhoes across the site and pounded a steel frame into place.

Duane, whose full name was not released because of Corrections Department policy, said he owned a construction business before he was incarcerated. He sees the job as a chance to keep his skills sharp, and he takes pride in watching the barn rise from the ground.

“Even though I’m out here, this reflects my work,” said Duane, who is serving 12 years for felony DUI. “It helps time go by.”

George C. Zoley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of GEO, said, “We appreciate the confidence placed in our company by the East Mississippi Correctional Facility Authority and the Mississippi Department of Corrections. We have established a successful public-private partnership with the Authority and the State of Mississippi, and we look forward to building on this partnership with our newly extended management contract.”

The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is a world leader in the delivery of correctional, detention, and residential treatment services to federal, state, and local government agencies around the globe. GEO offers a turnkey approach that includes design, construction, financing, and operations. GEO represents government clients in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. GEO’s worldwide operations include the management and/or ownership of 63 correctional and residential treatment facilities with a total design capacity of approximately 61,500 beds, including projects under development.

Prison administrators credit several changes in recent years, including reducing the number of rival gang members who are housed in the same living units.

Lewis said that in 2008, the department started identifying gang-affiliated inmates at the men’s reception center in Shelton before deciding where to place them.

Corrections officials said that gang members are responsible for 45 percent of incidents of violence, even though they only make up 20 percent of the prison population.

Deputy Prisons Director Dan Pacholke said there was an escalation of violence throughout 2007, including an increase in group attacks against one or two people at a time. That trend led the department to reassess its strategy on how to prevent such attacks, he said.

“There’s no quick fix, there’s no magic cure, but it’s definitely going in the right direction,” Pacholke said.

Lewis said other factors, such as increased focus on in-prison chemical dependency and education programs, increased visits from family members, and the department’s recent rule to allow inmates to e-mail family members, has helped reduce problems.

“If you just get one or two visits per year you are significantly less likely to commit a violent infraction,” he said. “They have hope, they have a reason to want to do good.”

Lewis said that since most prisoners will eventually be released, it’s a matter of public safety.

“The more we can reduce violence in prison, hopefully the more we can reduce violence outside prison,” he said.

Only one prison has seen a slight increase in violence recently: the Washington Corrections Center for Women.

Pacholke said the increase at the women’s prison is due in part to the influx of new inmates after the closure of another women’s prison because of state budget cuts. Pacholke said that the increase was minor, jumping from one violent incident in April to five, and that most of the incidents involved fighting.

“I was doing it because it was a condition of my probation and it would reduce my community hours,” Rouse recalls.

The 42-year-old had turned to drugs as a way of coping with the stress of his job at a hospital where he frequently worked an 80-hour week. But cooking up to a gram of crystal meth a day to feed his habit gradually took its toll on his life at home, which he shared with his wife and three young children. Finally, fearing for his life, Mitchell’s wife turned him into the authorities. “If she hadn’t, I would be dead or destitute by now,” he says.

Five years on, he is free from drugs, holding down a job as a building contractor, and reunited with his family. He describes being sentenced to a reading group as “a miracle” and says the six-week reading course “changed the way I look at life”.

“It made me believe in my own potential. In the group you’re not wrong, you’re not necessarily right either, but your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s,” he says.

Rouse is one of thousands of offenders across the US who, as an alternative to prison, are placed on a rehabilitation programme called Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL- http://cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm). Repeat offenders of serious crimes such as armed robbery, assault or drug dealing are made to attend a reading group where they discuss literary classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bell Jar and Of Mice and Men.

Rouse’s group was run by part-time lecturer in liberal studies at Rice University in Houston, Larry Jablecki, who uses the texts of Plato, Mill and Socrates to explore themes of fate, love, anger, liberty, tolerance and empathy. “I particularly liked some of the ideas in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty,” says Mitchell, who now wants to do a PhD in philosophy.

Groups are single sex and the books chosen resonate with some of the issues the offenders may be facing. A male group, for example, may read books with a theme of male identity. A judge, a probation officer and an academic join a session of 30 offenders to talk about issues as equals.

Of the 597 who have completed the course in Brazoria County, Texas, between 1997 and 2008, only 36 (6%) had their probations revoked and were sent to jail.

A year-long study of the first cohort that went through the programme, which was founded in Massachusetts in 1991, found that only 19% had reoffended compared with 42% in a control group. And those from the programme who did reoffend committed less serious crimes.

CLTL is the brainchild of Robert Waxler, a professor of English at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As an experiment, he convinced his friend, Judge Kane, to take eight criminals who repeatedly came before him and place them on a reading programme that Waxler had devised instead of sending them to prison. It now runs in eight states including Texas, Arizona and New York.

In the UK, nearly half of prisoners reoffend within a year of being released from jail. Could programmes like CLTL work on this side of the Atlantic where Ken Clarke, in his first major speech as justice secretary, indicated that more offenders could be given community sentences by putting a greater emphasis on what he terms “intelligent sentencing”?

Lady Stern, senior research fellow at the international centre for prison studies at King’s College London, is not convinced. “Research does show that the public are largely pro-rehabilitation, but when you take an idea that involves offenders attending a university campus to be part of a reading group, instead of being sentenced to prison, it asks a lot of even the most thoughtful and socially conscious public,” she says.

The initiative was initially met with an inevitable flurry of criticism in the US. Waxler and his supporters were described as “bleeding-heart liberals”.

“They were shocked at the idea of offenders going on to university campuses to read books for free while the students were paying their way through education,” says Waxler. “Some even thought the offenders would steal from them. It only takes one person to prove them right, but it’s never happened.”

In Texas, the public have been largely won over by the success rates and how cheap the programme is to run. Instead of spending a lifetime in prison at a cost of more than $30,000 (£19,520) a year, Rouse’s “rehabilitation” cost the taxpayer just $500 (£325).

But it is the experiences of offenders, some of whom have never read a book before, that Waxler points to.

“In one group we read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway,” he recalls. “The story focuses on Santiago, an old fisherman in Cuba, and opens with some heartache: Santiago is not able to catch fish. We talk about him and the endurance he seems to represent, the very fact that he gets up every morning despite the battering he takes.

“The following time the group meet, one of the offenders wants to share something. He’d been walking down Main Street and he said he could hear, metaphorically speaking, the voices of his neighbourhood. He’d been thinking about returning to his old life, to drugs, but as he listened to those voices, he also heard the voice of Santiago. If Santiago could continue to get up each day and make the right choice then he could do too.”

Santiago, a character in a novel, had become the offender’s role model. For many offenders, some of whom have spent half their lives in jail, it is the first time they’ve had a worthy model, says Waxler.

Literacy is a problem. Offenders are unlikely to be sentenced to the programme if they cannot read. However, those with poor reading are not excluded. The groups may read short stories, or excerpts from a novel may be read aloud so that low-level readers can participate.

In the UK, a version of the programme called Stories Connect is running in a handful of prisons with some success, and in Exeter it has recently moved out into the community for people with drug and alcohol problems. But it does not yet have the support of the criminal justice system, so cannot be an alternative sentencing option for the courts.

Retired probation officer Louise Ross voluntarily runs the small group in Exeter. Participants are referred from the Exeter and North Devon Addiction Service, and were, until three-year funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation ran out in April, made to attend as part of a community service order. Now all attendance is voluntary, but stories of how the programme changes lives are no less impressive.

After years of opiate abuse, Steve Rowe, 50, who joined the first Exeter group three years ago, says: “Stories Connect didn’t just change my life, it saved it.” He explains: “We looked at a section of Oliver Twist, the relationship between Bill Sikes and Nancy. One of us pretended we were Bill while everyone else asked questions. The idea was you responded as much as you could from that character’s point of view. It makes you think about what others think and feel, and really helps you to reflect on yourself.”

Mary Stephenson, a writer, who runs Stories Connect, says more funding is needed. To date, in Exeter, 96 people have been through the programme, but of these only 29 completed the course. This, she says, is largely due to the chaotic lives of the participants, many of whom are battling with drug problems, and the fact that the groups are not an alternative to prison, which removes the main incentive.

There are plans, again subject to funding, for the University of Exeter to run a research project into the effectiveness of the programme in the UK, both inside prisons and out. But until then, there are no quantitative results that prove the programme reduces reoffending.

Next week, Stephenson is attending a roundtable meeting with prisons and probation minister Crispin Blunt, at which she will make the point that the programme could be achieving so much more.

“In terms of tackling reoffending, we need both more funding and the political support to explore it,” says Stephenson. “There’s no doubt among the people I’ve worked with that the success in America could be repeated here.”

Waxler agrees: “I think that one of the great testaments of this programme is that it demonstrates clearly that literature can make a difference to people’s lives,” he says. “I already believed that, but I knew it could also be used to rehabilitate offenders.”

Rouse says it is hard to judge how much the reading group should take credit for turning his life around as he’d already made the decision to change.

“I didn’t want to lose my family,” he says. “But the group did give me the guidance and direction I needed in my life, and without it I’d have spent the rest of my life in jail. It gave me a second chance.”

In the calm of a warm spring evening, a man in uniform stood alone at Pomona’s civic center, gathering his thoughts. Police Chief Dave Keetle stared for a few moments at a plaque dedicated to his father, a former council member, before heading into a meeting. Lately, the younger Keetle has thought about his own legacy and whether he will be asked to dismantle a Police Department his late father passionately supported.

At the city’s request, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has completed a preliminary study on the cost of taking over police services. The ultimate decision — if it comes to that — would be left to the voters, possibly as early as this fall.

Pomona, with a population of more than 155,000, would be the largest city in the county to turn to the Sheriff’s Department to save money. Hiring deputies could save the city millions — and chip away at a $14.2-million deficit.

Pomona council members say that the proposal is only in the exploratory stage, but, nonetheless, a funk has descended on the rank and file in a department that is nearing its 100th anniversary and that believes it deserves credit for turning the tide on years of violent crime and gang activity.

“There’s people who have put in 20 to 30 years here,” Keetle said. “They’ve dedicated their lives to this city.”

Pomona is hardly the first L.A. County city to look at disbanding its police department. Tiny Sierra Madre considered doing away with its force, but ultimately rejected the idea. Maywood pulled the plug on its police force and virtually every other City Hall job earlier this month. Cudahy, which had been policed by Maywood, is now patrolled by sheriff’s deputies.

The city has an operating budget of about $90 million, half of which goes to the Police Department.

“The fact that Pomona, which has a long-standing Police Department, has approached us is pretty interesting,” Sheriff’s Capt. Bruce Fogarty said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear from other cities in these economic times.”

The city is home to the 12th Street gang, which has about 1,000 members and deep ties in the community. Pomona was once described by authorities as “a hotbed of gang activity.” In 1989, the city reported 45 murders, the highest recorded in any San Gabriel Valley city at the time.

Police have since zeroed in on the gang and the murder rate has dropped. Last year there were 17 homicides, and residents say the streets seem safer.

“It tends to have a bad rap, but I’ve never felt unsafe,” said Deb Mashek, a psychology professor at Harvey Mudd College who moved to Pomona five years ago.

Mashek, 35, was among the hundreds of sign-waving residents and city employees who flooded council chambers earlier this year to protest the possibility of shutting down the Police Department.

The department’s future has been up for debate before. In 1986, Pomona was having money trouble and explored contracting out police, fire and library services. The issue was abandoned, although the county took over the Fire Department soon after. In 1990, council members talked openly about getting rid of the police force but then abruptly dropped the idea.

This time, the mere request to explore shutting down the Police Department has spurred a debate that reaches deep inside Pomona’s neighborhoods.

The Pomona police force has a long history of controversy, including accusations of racial profiling, police brutality and a code of silence among officers. In 1996, an officer sued the city, alleging that his colleagues harassed him after he reported that officers were stealing money and planting drugs on suspects. More recently, the department was accused of targeting Latinos by setting up traffic checkpoints during holidays like Cinco de Mayo and using what Councilwoman Cristina Carrizosa called “Gestapo”-like tactics.

Hank Fung, a 28-year-old civil engineer, said he takes issue with the “instantaneous support” some residents have showered on police.

“To put all the options on the table is something that’s fiscally responsible when you have a city that has a huge budget deficit,” Fung said.

Other residents say more thought should have been given to the effect on officers’ attitudes. “Who wants to go all out if you think you’re going to be canned the next day?” said Tamara Fair, 51, a Neighborhood Watch block captain of five years. “I just think we’re throwing our Police Department under the bus.”

The evaluation, which was finished in June, is being reviewed by city staff and an outside consultant. A more comprehensive study will be conducted at a cost of about $25,000 if the city decides to press forward.

Councilman Stephen Atchley doubts that it will get that far. “It appears that public sentiment is ‘hell no,’ and that’s to be expected,” he said. “Most people don’t really get the seriousness of the issue. It just doesn’t dawn on people how city finances work, where the money comes from and goes to.”

Meanwhile, the Pomona Police Officers Assn. has attempted to rally the city around the issue. A Save Pomona PD website was created, e-mails have been blasted, and red signs reading “Our Safety. Our Police” were printed and distributed. They have even reached out to leaders in Compton, which turned its law enforcement over to the county a decade ago but is pushing for its return.

At the same time, officers can’t shake the feeling that they have been betrayed by the city they serve.

“I had a discussion with the city manager, and we talked about loyalty one day, and she said her loyalty was to the community, not to the employees,” said Sgt. Rob Baker, president of the officers’ association. “I was crushed. Are you kidding me? I’ve been hurt; I’ve been shot at; I’ve had to use legal force; and I’m a workaholic. And you don’t consider me part of your community?”

Association members say they were caught off-guard by the recent proposal and have accused City Manager Linda Lowry of deliberately keeping them in the dark. Lowry said she was upfront with the officers and has grown tired of the personal attacks.

“You can’t continue to degrade the level of services in every other sector without finally addressing significant cuts in public safety,” she said.

“Any time there is a county inmate, the county is solely responsible for caring for the inmate,” said Crumpton. “When we pick someone up for the state for something like violating probation or some other crime, in addition to providing medical care when needed, we have to provide food and clothing.

“The state doesn’t reimburse us until after that person is revoked,” he added. “That could take some time, and in the meantime, we have to pay everything from our budget.”

The new law, which took effect after Gov. Haley Barbour’s signature on April 7th, seeks to limit counties’ responsibility when bills exceed standard Medicaid rates or rates paid by the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Rates may vary depending on what kind of procedure or prescription an inmate needs.

Before the change, counties had to pay medical and drug costs for all state inmates. The state then reimbursed the counties at a fraction of the cost. Counties also were responsible for the full cost of care for pretrial detainees — those arrested and waiting to go to court.

“It’s tough because you are always questioned about why the jail budget is over,” said Crumpton. “It’s something you can’t help when the state houses inmates at your facility.

“The way the law is written, while they are here, they are ours to protect and make sure they are properly treated while they are in our custody.”

While Crumpton would only say Smith County spends a substantial amount of money for the care of inmates, Perry County Sheriff Jimmy Dale Smith said his agency spent close to $60,000 last year.

“We budget so much every year,” said Smith. “We have to carry inmates to the doctor if they complain about being sick.

“If we go to the emergency room or if they have to see a specialist, it all comes out of our budget. You’ve got to provide for them. I don’t know of any other way around it.”

Last year, Perry County had an in-house company providing medical care to its inmates. However, because of budget constraints, the county was forced to end the service.

“These medical costs are hitting us hard,” Smith said.

It’s different for Jones County officials. Jones County Administrator Charles Miller said the cost of the medical care of state inmates is not an issue.

“If we have medical concerns, we have a plus here,” he added. “We own the hospital (South Central Regional Medical Center) and we can work out something with them.”

Shaunita Weathersby, public information director for the Jones County Sheriffs Department, said Sheriff Alex Hodge doesn’t make it a habit of housing state inmates. “We barely have enough space for those here in the county,” she said.

She estimated that the electrical alone would have cost $35,000 to $40,000 at each prison site.

When Eastern Wyoming College came up with the idea of a mobile welding lab, the model seemed like a good fit for the prison system’s needs. So the department obtained a one-time appropriation of $194,000 from the Legislature to fund the mobile lab project.

One of the challenges was to find a trailer with a generator that could power the mobile lab.

“We didn’t know we already had it,” Abbott said.

A trailer, purchased years before as military surplus, was sitting unused in the weeds at the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk.

“We opened it up, and, lo and behold, there’s this huge generator inside it,” Abbott recalled.

So the trailer and generator that once helped run a missile site was refurbished to help run a Department of Corrections job-training program.

A plus in finding a trailer already in inventory was that the $194,000 in state money stretched to include not only the revamped trailer and its new tires, but instructional curriculum at four prison sites, gas tanks, books, helmets, welding rods and other equipment — right down to the earplugs.

The welding lab has stations for training five students at a time and will be used at the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk, the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins and the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington. The lab will be rolled out next month in Rawlins.

With the economic downturn, Abbott said, it has become more difficult for released prisoners to find jobs. “Employers have more choice.”

But she said there is always going to be demand for welders, if not at the high levels seen during the energy boom. It is also an occupation open to ex-offenders.

“There’s not the prohibition for a felon to work as a welder like there is for things such as pharmacy, nursing, medical, some of those areas where they can’t get licensed,” Abbott said.

While high-demand fields such as medical are closed, Abbott said, the department is looking for other options, such as offering training in Microsoft Office. There is also an apprenticeship program at the fish farm in Lusk, and the department plans to start a wastewater certification program.

The job cuts, prison officials say, mean a dramatic reduction in job training for inmates preparing for release, lost wages for prisoners to pay down child support and other court-ordered fines, and more tension in already overcrowded institutions.

“Anytime we have a loss of inmate jobs … it becomes more challenging to keep inmates constructively occupied,” federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says. Bureau records show the job cuts during the past two years coincide with slight increases in serious inmate assaults on staff and other prisoners.

Slightly more than 7,000 federal prisoners have been cut from the work rolls in the past two years, and up to 800 more are expected to be dropped in the next several months, according to Federal Prison Industries records.

The latest cut, announced last week, will closenine factories scattered from Pennsylvania to California and includes reductions in staff at 11 others, Federal Prison Industries spokeswoman Julie Rozier says.

She says the cuts represent some of the largest reductions in the 75-year history of the federal prison workforce. “We’re feeling the same pressures that are present in the overall economy,” she says. This year, 16,115 of the system’s 211,146 inmates are working in the factory jobs, down from 23,152 in 2008.

Federal Prison Industries is a government corporation established by Congress in 1934 that provides training for federal inmates. The industries generate about 80 products and services for sale to the federal government. In return, inmates are paid up to $1.15 per hour. Much of that goes to child support, fines, restitution and other court-ordered obligations.

Prison guards and others fear the cuts could spark inmate unrest in overcrowded institutions where jobs — however menial — have kept prisoners occupied.

Last year, serious assaults on staffers increased to 105, up from 100 in 2008, while inmate-on-inmate assaults totaled 524, up from 475 in 2008. “This is a big concern for us,” says Bryan Lowry, president of the federal prison employees association. Because of yearly prison population increases, he says, the federal system is running 37% over capacity.

Fewer jobs mean more downtime for inmates and more crowded recreation yards and housing units. In some places, Lowry says, there is only one prison officer for about 150 inmates: “It’s not a good situation.”