When the Mississippi Department of Corrections announced its plan to cut the the Joint Inmate Work Program last year, counties scrambled to make up the additional expense for services.

Previously, the MDOC incentivized counties to house inmates for labor, releasing some of the pressure on the overcrowded prison system. Closing the program would save $3 billion, MDOC officials said at the time.

The state paid counties $20 a day for each inmate counties housed but, more importantly, these inmates cleaned up roadside litter, prepared food for detention centers and performed janitorial duties. Cutting the program didn’t just mean a significant loss of revenue, it meant counties would have to pay for services lost as well.

Worried about the cost of hiring others to replace this lost labor, county supervisors statewide negotiated to keep the program running, though they lost the monetary incentive to do so.

“The county supervisors and I agreed that the work provided is worth the $20 loss,” Lauderdale County Sheriff Billie Sollie said. “We are very happy to have what we have but we could use more (inmates).”

“It didn’t hurt us as bad as it could have,” Kyle Rutledge, District 5 supervisor for Lauderdale County, said last year. “It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.”

Rutledge told The Meridian Star last year he worried because the revenue loss hit the county in the last two months of their budget process, meaning the county had to account for new expenses while staying within its previous budget.

Working with MDOC

Rutledge credited the county’s resilience to a compromise arranged by the Mississippi Association of Supervisors and Sollie’s relationship with the MDOC.

“Since we were one of the first counties to work through an agreement with the department of corrections, we agreed to forgo the $20 in order to keep our inmates,” Rutledge said.

The program allowed nonviolent offenders – those with DUI convictions and those charged with property crimes or certain drug crimes – to work time off their sentences at county facilities.

Currently, the county’s 35-bed facility for housing inmates holds around a dozen inmate laborers, but numbers in the last few weeks have been as low as five. Based on calculations for the average 20 inmates in the summer of 2015, various county officials estimated the cost of housing inmates and replacing their labor could range from $140,000 to $500,000.

The county did have to hire a litter crew of full-time workers, according to Rutledge. The number on this crew varies in response to demand from other departments. Sometimes high school or college summer interns supplement this crew, earning $8 an hour for their work.

The budget for fiscal year 2017 is $133,047 for four employees on the litter crew, according to Rutledge.

“We were going to have to hire a lot of people,” Rutledge said. “It saves us money having those workers.”

Benefits for inmates

Sollie said the program benefits the inmates because they have the chance to reduce their sentence through work and can use this program to show future employers they spent their time incarcerated productively.

“It provides an opportunity for inmates to reduce their time in the state’s correctional system while earning time off their sentence, Sollie said. “Once they’ve completed their sentence they (can) talk to their future employer and say, ‘See what I’ve done? See how well I’ve done?’ “

“Most of the guys – they like it. They would rather do work and get out than sit in the jail all day,” Rutledge said.

The MDOC has made various other budget cuts, including the closure of five work centers and the privately-run Walnut Grove prison. MDOC credited the closure of the work centers to inadequate staffing, according to a July news release.

In a press release from December 2015, MDOC commissioner Marshall Fisher said, “When I was appointed corrections commissioner (in January of 2015) … I said my priority was increasing the abysmal pay of corrections employees.”

However, the release said “a glitch in the exemption legislation” prohibited MDOC from increasing employee pay and named pay as a likely factor for the 47 percent turnover rate and inadequate staffing.

Base pay for corrections officers is $25,968.72 a year.

The department declined a request for an interview.