THE GAZETTE
CAÑON CITY • Sure, they’d rather be fishing.
That’s not an option when you’re locked up 24/7.
Instead, inmates serving time for sexual assault have to be contentmaking fishing rods. There aren’t many trout streams in prison.
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.
That’s not an option when you’re locked up 24/7.
Instead, inmates serving time for sexual assault have to be contentmaking fishing rods. There aren’t many trout streams in prison.
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.
Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/inmates-92172-prison-profit.html#ixzz29rDS1siX
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