PUEBLO (Colorado) CHIEFTAIN

July 11, 2007

DOC pilot program working well

Farmers, inmates happy; a second crew will be out in the fields today.

By MARGIE WOOD
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

A pilot program using prison inmates to replace migrant farm workers who are avoiding Colorado this year is working well, state officials and participating farmers said Tuesday.

The program will add a second crew of 10 women starting today, with the possibility of three more crews by harvest time, according to Katherine Sanguinetti, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

State Rep. Dorothy Butcher proposed the inmate program after large numbers of migrant farm workers opted not to deal with Colorado's stringent new immigration laws after a special session of the Legislature last summer. Butcher also spoke at a press conference in Avondale on Tuesday.

"I felt the state of Colorado was sending the message, ‘We're closed to business,’ ” she said. "This is about commerce. If a farmer can't get his crop to a customer this year, the customer will be gone next year."

Agriculture, including "the best damn chile anywhere," contributes $4.7 million to Pueblo County's economy, she added.

Butcher said the Legislature "tried to do no harm, but harm was done. Luckily the Department of Corrections had an agriculture program," which made it possible to start the pilot program this year.

It started small, with one crew of 10 women from La Vista prison in Pueblo (the former Minimum Center, which is now a medium-security facility).

"We didn't want to put 40 people out here until we got some experience with the program," Butcher said. "We didn't want it to fail."

At first, she considered the inmates to be a stopgap until the federal government could straighten out the immigration issues. But after the U.S. Senate voted down a compromise bill on immigration 10 days ago, Butcher said Tuesday she thinks a state solution is more likely to happen.

"When the United States can negotiate agreements like NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), it's the damnedest thing that we can't provide for workers," she said. "We have to decide, do we want farmers in this country to grow our food, or do we want to buy it all from China?"

She called on state and local officials to put pressure on Congress to "allow us as a state to bring in our own workers."

The DOC's Sanguinetti said the first crew of 10 - plus five other women who have been providing relief for the first crew and will form the core of the second crew beginning this week - "are very happy to be working in this program. They like being outside in the sun, getting a work ethic. They know they'll have some skills and work ethic to use when they get out." They've mentioned firming up and weight loss as additional benefits, she added with a smile.

The women are earning $4 a day, with a 50-cent increment each month they stay in the program. The five farmers who have contracted with DOC pay $9.60 an hour per inmate, which covers the pay for the inmates, plus the expenses of their supervisor/guard, meals and transportation.

The biggest obstacle from DOC's perspective was finding supervisors for the farm program, she said. The two who are working now already were on the DOC staff, and two more will be hired.

The farmers were reluctant to speak at the press conference and some of them don't want to be identified publicly. Butcher said they have incurred a negative response from news commentators who complained of "slave labor," and from the "private sector (that) didn't want the competition from prison labor."

Patti Dionisio, who is the farms' liaison with the program, said the inmate project was criticized by the United Farm Workers union.

"They said we didn't appreciate the skilled labor of the migrants," she said. "We replied that we certainly know the skills of the people we have hired, but the point is that they aren't here this year."

The inmates had a lot to learn when they first arrived in the fields in mid-May, she said. "We had to show them how to tell the (crop) plants from the weeds."

They started out hoeing and thinning vegetables, and they were lucky to finish two rows in a day. Now they're doing nine or 10 rows a day - about what could be expected of an experienced farm worker, Dionisio said.

"We also had some concerns about whether the women could catch the cabbages and melons," she said. "But these gals are pretty tough."

Although the prison program costs a little more on the face, she said, "the DOC handles all the paperwork and sends us a bill. And you have the supervisor out there in the field with them - otherwise the farmer would be out there."

In the written statement she distributed for the farmers, they wrote, "It is a good feeling to know that we may be helping to keep some of these inmates from returning to prison, and saving the state money in the future, along with helping ourselves.

"From our point of view, we see success written all over this program. We can protect our investment by knowing what our labor force will be and we can plan our crops accordingly. It gives us the confidence to know that if we are fortunate enough to get the crop raised, we will have a steady, reliable work force to help harvest it whenever we need it."