Faced with Labor Shortage, an Iowa Business Turns to Prison Workers

The Graphic Edge in Carroll, one of the nation’s leading screen-printing and specialty athletic apparel operations, has joined 11 other state businesses in bringing aboard Iowa prison inmates for jobs long unfilled by the civilian workforce.

A dozen inmates from the minimum-security men’s penitentiary in Rockwell City, about a 45-minute drive from Carroll, are training this week on basic screen-printing machines.There are no violent or sex offenders in their ranks and the prisoners by law must be paid a prevailing wage for the work — expected to be between $8 and $8.50 an hour, said Roger Baysden, director of the Iowa Prison Industries private-sector work program.

“These are not hardened criminals,” said John Reglein, president and founder of The Graphic Edge.

Graphic Edge human resources director Peg Sanders said the inmates will work mainly during peak periods of the year. Additionally, they will be on the premises primarily on the weekends when the Graphic Edge hasn’t typically been running machines.

The inmates will run automatic printing presses that decorate shirts and other items for sale to high schools and colleges and other Graphic Edge customers.

“We have some peaks and valleys in our production, and boy, when those peaks hit, we just cannot get enough product out the door,” Reglein said. “Hiring people isn’t the easiest thing to do so we’re looking at Plan B.”

Reglein said the company has worked aggressively to find employees in the Carroll area — and Graphic Edge officials said they are still looking to hire in a number of positions for the growing company that now employs about 175 people (not including prisoners). Those jobs are listed at www.thegraphicedge.com.

“The intent is not to take jobs away from the Carroll community,” Sanders said.

In fact, the jobs the inmates will be doing have been posted with Iowa Workforce Development for more than 150 days, Baysden said.

The move to hire prison labor is something of a last resort.

“Any citizen that wants that job can preempt an inmate,” Baysden said.

Adds Reglein, “This is just a supplement.”

Graphic Edge chief financial officer Mike Riddle said the business is exceptionally labor-intensive because it handles many small orders for small schools across the nation.

This makes Graphic Edge more vulnerable to the well-chronicled worker shortage now facing Iowa.

Besides being a business decision, Graphic Edge officials see a social benefit to employing the prisoners since the offenders in the program will be out on the street soon.

Not just any inmate can work outside the razor-wire of the prisons.

Only well-vetted inmates can be in the program, Baysden said.

Of about 9,000 inmates in the Iowa Department of Corrections at any given time, only 250 to 300 are involved in the private-sector work program.

“Sex offenders are prohibited from participating in this program, as are offenders who have a violent background,” Baysden said.

There is clear evidence that inmates who work in the private sector are less likely to re-offend, Baysden said.

A recent three-year study conducted in Iowa by the University of Baltimore reveals that inmates in private-sector programs have a recidivism rate of just 5 percent, compared with 35 percent for the general prison population.

Within nine months, most of the inmates in the program will be released from prison, and job opportunities then are limited, Baysden said, noting that McDonald’s won’t even hire ex-convicts.

“The kind of work [Graphic Edge] does is perfect for an inmate,” Baysden said. “Where they end up working is in manufacturing or maybe agriculture.”

Prison officials will transport inmates to and from Carroll, but while there, the prisoners will be supervised only by The Graphic Edge.

Baysden said the program has had only two walk-off incidents in 12 years, and that the inmates, so near release, have an incentive to “fly straight” on the job.

What’s more, if just one inmate walks away, or otherwise causes problems, Baysden shuts down the whole contract at the business — meaning inmates self-police with intense peer pressure to do the right things.

“All I need is one screw-up, and all the inmates lose their jobs,” Baysden said.

While they will be paid the prevailing wage, inmates get to keep only $2 an hour. The rest of the money goes to child support, taxes, victims’ restitution and even “rent” for living in the prison.

Last fiscal year, inmates in the work program paid $134,000 in restitution, nearly $900,000 for living and eating in the prisons and $600,000 for child support and restitution.

“I see this as nothing more than the new frontier of corrections,” Baysden said.

Today marks the first time prisoners have done private-sector work in Carroll. In the past, Rockwell City labor has been used for community service at the Depot, the former Pub restaurant after a fire and for some cleanup after major storms.

Carroll Attorney Art Neu, a member of the Iowa Board of Corrections and a long-time advocate of more community-based corrections, has expressed interest in seeing non-violent offenders outside the walls of prisons under supervised work-release programs as soon as possible.

He talked with Reglein about the prison program during an impromptu meeting at a Denny’s restaurant in Carroll recently.

“I think that’s great,” Neu said of The Graphic Edge move. “The inmates obviously like to get out of prison even if its work [that] you and I wouldn’t like to be doing.”

Neu said the labor shortage in Iowa is forcing businesses like The Graphic Edge to pursue these alternatives.

He also notes that the men in the program aren’t coming from hard-core, maximum-security places in the system.

“It’s a minimum-security prison, and we think the least dangerous in all of our prisons, not counting women,” Neu said.