Yvette Michelle Crabtree Davis
April 7, 2008
Cecile D. St. Amant
April 9, 2008
State Rep. Damon Baldone of Houma filed a bill in the current session of the state Legislature allowing sheriffs in Louisiana to use more of inmates’ work release program wages to pay for their incarceration costs.
Typically, Baldone said, the amount of an inmate’s work release wages that sheriffs can use to pay for inmates’ board is capped at $12 a day, though other sheriffs deduct $30. Baldone said he would like to see the cap raised to $30 a day for all parishes in the state. However, his bill indicates that sheriffs could pay for an inmate’s entire incarceration costs using wages earned by the inmate.
“I’m trying to find out why some (sheriffs) only get $12 a day, some $30,” Baldone said.
The cost of boarding a prisoner includes food, clothing, medical and dental expenses.
Baldone believes using more of the wages to pay for boarding inmates is fair.
“(Inmates) can pay their own way,” he said. “We want the money to go back to who’s paying the money – the state and the parish. Sheriffs provide three squares, heat and electricity.”
His bill does not force parishes in the state to use inmates’ wages to pay for their incarceration. The bill gives sheriffs more of an incentive to institute work release programs. The programs generate income for sheriff’s departments and allow inmates to learn a trade, he said.
“In six weeks they can be a welder,” Baldone said. “They have less chance of being a repeat offender.”
Wages from the work release program not used for an inmate’s board are deposited into the inmate’s account. Baldone said the money frequently pays for such things as an inmate’s child support obligations and mortgages.
Employers pay inmates on work release the same wages as other employees, which can be $120 a day in south Louisiana, he said.
The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, which operates an inmate work release program from a facility in Raceland, deducts $22 a day from inmates’ wages to pay for their boarding costs, said sheriff’s office spokesman Larry Weidel.
He said raising any cap on deductions from inmate paychecks would be easier in south Louisiana than in the northern part of the state because of the better-paying industrial jobs in the south.
Inmate labor fills a need in the community because of the shortage of workers in south Louisiana, he said.
“The work release program is successful,” Weidel said.
Although the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office does not have an inmate work release program, Sheriff-elect Vernon Bourgeois said he has looked into work release programs in other parishes.
Bourgeois also strongly believes that inmates should learn a trade.
“They won’t be in trouble out there,” he said. “A lot of people think they’re worthless, then they realize they can build a cabinet. When people find that they have a trade, they like it.”
Bourgeois said around 90 percent of companies using inmate labor will hire inmates when they are released.
He said privatized inmate work release programs and in-house programs both have merits and drawbacks. A privatized program would bring less money into the sheriff’s department, but the in-house kind would require building a work release facility and hiring personnel.
Bourgeois said, “I would need 12 to 15 employees automatically if I open a work release center.”
