Taxpayers Get a Break From Prison Farms

The News & Advance
Published: August 27, 2008

Each of the 30,000 inmates in Virginia’s prison system gets two 8-ounce servings of milk a day. What a drag on the state’s taxpayers, you say.

But is it really? No, not when the inmates themselves are helping produce the milk.

As the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported recently, the dairy operation at James River Correctional Center in Goochland County is run mostly by low-security inmates. They milk 133 cows three times a day, seven days a week. The milk is pasteurized, mixed with powdered milk and water to make it 1 percent milk fat, refrigerated and packaged all in the same building.

Frank Baber III, the agribusiness manager at James River, said he has one of the top-producing dairy herds in the state, a credit to the inmates and the dairy’s small staff. With the other dairy farm at Bland Correctional Center, the dairies produce some 1.2 million gallons of milk a year.

The dairy farms are just part of the state’s prison farm operations that feed inmates and save taxpayers millions of dollars. Another important by-product of the farms is the skills that inmates learn to help find jobs when they have completed time for their offenses.

With nearly 160 acres of crops growing at Yarden Farm about 50 miles south of Richmond, the Department of Corrections has one of the most diverse agricultural enterprises in the state. Altogether, the prison system has some 10,000 acres across Virginia in cultivation or in use as pasture.

And what is the savings to taxpayers from the fruits of the inmate labors? William H. Gillette puts it at about $6 million annually. He is the agribusiness manager for the state prison system.

“As far as I know, we are the only (prison) program in the country that can handle — statewide — fresh produce, frozen produce, meat and milk, all of it delivered to any institution in less than 24 hours,” Gillette said.

Prison farms are not really new, although ones operated on the scale of Virginia’s farms are rare these days. Lynchburg had a city farm for inmates in the 1940s, but the growing size of the inmate population probably made it obsolete.

The state farms, nonetheless, are flourishing. All of the dairy, pork, beef and fish consumed by inmates is produced or otherwise handled by the program, which has nearly doubled its sales in the past five years.

The list of crops covers the fresh produce aisle at the local grocery store. It includes sweet corn, apples, broccoli, squash, beans, peppers, asparagus, cantaloupes, sweet potatoes, carrots, cabbage, lettuce and strawberries.

Also included in the farm operation are such related enterprises as milk- and juice-processing plants, a produce sorting and distribution center, a small fleet of trucks and a maintenance shop, 30 greenhouses to start plants, hydroponics for year-round growing and more than 200 beehives for crop pollination and honey.

It’s an incredible array of agricultural production and support services that are a necessary part of it.

And who, in addition to the taxpayers, benefits from the program? The inmates themselves who work on the farms. Gillette said the agricultural programs employ about 1,000 inmates who earn up to 45 cents an hour. Much of the work is simple labor, but a number of inmates learn skills and gain experience that can get them employment on the outside.

That work experience includes operating forklifts, applying pesticides or operating tractors and other heavy equipment. Others work in greenhouses, nurseries and the dairies that provide milk for inmates all across the prison system.

The prison farm program is saving grocery money for the state and it’s providing work experience for the inmates. It’s a win-win combination that has nothing but benefits.