Patrick County and other localities use inmate labor to help save tax dollars, encourage inmates to remain productive and ensure work in the area is completed on a timely basis, authorities said of their inmate labor forces.
Patrick County
Trustee inmates at the Patrick County Jail save the county an estimated $180,000 annually by performing work with the Animal Control Shelter, Maintenance, and Parks and Recreation departments and within the jail.
Patrick County Sheriff Dan Smith said trustees are inmates who are not convicted of violent crimes.
“They go through a screening process and are considered low risk inmates and are not considered dangerous,” he said.
While the exact number of trustees fluctuates depending on who’s eligible, Smith said the number averages around 12.
“Most of them are in charge of maintaining, cleaning, preparing food, doing laundry inside the jail in the sheriff’s office,” he said.
Four trustees are allowed to leave the facility and work with the county departments.
“Typically, every day Monday through Friday, they are used at the Animal Control Shelter, county maintenance, and county rec department,” Smith said. Crews perform “maintenance, mowing, weed eating, cleaning, and cleaning the dog kennels. They assist those departments that they’re working with.”
Some trustees also work at the Transfer Station and with the Patrick County Alzheimer’s Association, LLC, he said, and added that depending on the inmates’ skills, they also do carpentry, plumbing, and other general maintenance work.
When trustees are working at county departments, Smith said the departments are responsible for feeding the trustees.
“During the summer, SRO deputies (School Resource Officers) will take inmates to specific schools to assist in maintenance at the school when the school is out of session,” he said.
Smith said trustees also built the mountain bike trail system at I.C. DeHart Memorial Park in Woolwine. The more than 20-mile trail system was started in 2008 and completed in 2016.
“That draws lots of visitors to the county every weekend, it’s a regional attraction. It’s a huge deal for people in the mountain biking circuit,” Smith said.
The trustee work program has been going on for decades, “long before I was a sheriff,” Smith said, adding the trustees basically work 40 hours a week, or the equivalent of full-time jobs, while in jail.
“They leave around 8:30 in the morning and they come back around 4:30 in the afternoon,” he said.
The hours translate into an average of at least four full-time positions that the county does not have to fill or provide salaries, benefits and the like.
Smith said four trustees typically go out each day, though sometimes more go out depending on the need. Trustees are not paid for doing the work program.
The county does not pay for the program, and participating inmates are not charged the daily fee allowed by the state, Smith said.
“There is no cost to the program,” Smith said, and he believes the trustee program is a win-win for residents, inmates and the county.
The program “provides valuable resources for the county, and it’s an efficient use of inmate labor,” he said. “In my opinion, it assists in the rehabilitation of the inmates because they’re basically” working “as part of the repayment of their debt to society,” Smith said. “I do believe it plays a significant role in their reintegration back into society once they’re released.”
Henry County
Henry County Sheriff Wayne Davis estimated 40 inmates are a part of the trustee work program in his office. Participating trustees average 7 to 8 hours of work a day, seven days a week.
“You would be looking at roughly about 320-340 hours of inmate labor a day,” Davis said. That’s about 2,200 hours of inmate labor a week for “at least 30 full-time employees.”
Davis said about $3,800 per day is performed in inmate labor, which is “approximately $1 million in inmate labor” annually “if that labor was performed at a minimum wage rate.”
When determining who can be a trustee, Davis said the office first looks at what the inmate is currently charged with, previous criminal history, and previous behavioral history if they’ve been incarcerated before.
“We make a determination based on those factors – whether they would make a good fit as trustee or not. Obviously, we don’t want someone who’s dangerous and/or any potential risk for escape,” he said.
While trustees work both outside and inside the jail, Davis said the majority work inside the facility.
“They assist with cleaning the facility, they assist with preparing all the meals for the inmates, kitchen work, they assist with serving those meals to the inmates, cleaning up the kitchen,” he said.
Working in the facility’s kitchen is a big task because it has a daily population of more than 250 inmates, Davis said. Thirteen trustees work in the kitchen, and their work days are 10-hours long.
“They get three meals a day, it takes a tremendous amount of labor to ensure that they’re all fed, and the vast majority of labor comes to trustee work,” he said.
Outside the facility, Davis said a four-man trustee trash crew is out and about picking up trash on the streets and/or roads nearly every day.
“They pick up hundreds of bags of waste a week along our highways,” he said.
Another four inmates help to maintain and take care of the Dick & Willie Trail, and two inmates maintain the grass and outdoor landscaping around the Adult Detention Center and the Public Safety compounds, the sheriff said.
Two trustees are assigned to the county maintenance department, where they’re responsible for assisting in mowing the grounds around the Henry County Courthouse and Administration Building, and keeping up with landscaping duties.
Those crews recently participated in putting in all the mulch around the Henry County Administration Building, Davis said, and added that one trustee goes out daily with the Gateway Streetscape Foundation to help with beautification projects around Henry County.
“We have inmate labor who takes care of all the custodial needs in the sheriff’s office, as far as cleaning the sheriff’s office, keeping it maintained as well. There also is inmate labor washing our patrol vehicles and keeping those looking nice,” he said.
Davis said trustees are not paid for their work.
“Anyone who is incarcerated in the Adult Detention Center has a daily rate that they have to pay back to help cover the cost of their incarceration. Those who are trustees are obviously afforded additional freedoms and opportunities, and they are not required to pay their daily rate back to the county. The daily rate is waived for all trustees,” he said.
When trustees work for county departments during the work program, Davis said his office is responsible for feeding them, and they leave the center with a prepared meal each work day.
“They only eat one meal outside the detention center,” he said. “Obviously, they eat breakfast before they leave, they take a prepared meal with them, and then they eat another meal once they get back in the evening.”
City of Martinsville Sheriff’s Office
Martinsville Sheriff’s Maj. Laura Hopkins said there are 29 trustees in the city’s program.
In February, Hopkins said trustees completed 4,448 hours of work. In 2021-2023, trustees averaged 34,000 hours a year.
If the city didn’t do the trustee work program, 17 employees would need to be hired full-time to fulfill the 34,000 hours worked a year.
Hopkins said at the minimum wage of $12 an hour and without benefits, the cost to hire those employees would be $408,000 a year.
Hopkins said trustees are inmates who don’t have violent charges, are not a flight risk, and have usually been sentenced.
“We have some who qualify to go out only under the gun, which means they have to be with an officer, and then we have a few that qualify to go that aren’t under the gun,” she said.
Ten of the trustees are at the main jail and only work inside the facility. At the Martinsville City Jail Annex, Hopkins said two trustees only work inside while 17 can work inside or outside the Annex.
“Our primary works crews come out of our Annex. They’re the ones who go out and mow and do things like that,” she said.
Hopkins said the work trustees do depends on the department requests they get.
“They’ve done work for the police department, they’ve done work in our office buildings over the years. They’ve torn down walls, put up walls, they’ve put windows in the building years ago,” she said.
Hopkins said trustees also mow and landscape, help clean up city lots, help with bulk trash, work at Hooker Field, and help board up properties.
“They do work for the city as far as painting offices, building shelves, a couple of years ago they actually rebuilt the judges’ bench in General District Court. They help the health department move things when they need to be moved, they will cut trees that have fallen for our wood program,” she said. “I mean it’s just a large list of things that they’ve done.”
Trustees also do work for 11 non-profit organizations including the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Christmas Cheer, and ANCHOR House.
For their work, trustees are paid $2 per day.
Hopkins said the only cost for the work program is the cost of housing inmates in the facility.
“There’s costs associated with the fact that they’re in jail, and then there’s food, medical, clothing, hygiene, and all the supplies that they need to do the various jobs that they do,” she said.
When trustees do work outside of the facility, for the work program, Hopkins said the Sheriff’s Office is still responsible for feeding them.
“We have to feed all of the inmates. Depending on what they’re doing sometimes they take their lunch with them,” she said. “Our menus have to be approved by a dietician, but they probably get sandwiches at lunchtime if they’re not coming back to the building to eat. They pack a lunch.”
