Outside on the Job

They're like everybody else--almost. They go to work each weekday morning, serve communities throughout North Carolina as barbers, mechanics, cooks, secretaries and farmers. Then they go home --to their cells in state prisons. There are 306 of them, and they are convicts taking part in North Carolina's promising work-release program, a rehabilitation plan based on the idea that a prisoner with a steady outside job is of greater benefit both to himself and the state.

Begun tentatively in 1957, North Carolina's system has evolved under State Prison Director George W. Randall into the most liberal outside work plan in the nation. All inmates with sentences of five years or less are eligible for consideration, provided they are not sex offenders, confirmed alcoholics or drug addicts. Each prisoner's weekly paycheck is turned over to the state, which gives him $5 for personal expenses, keeps $1 for state-furnished transportation--and $2.25 a day for room and board. The remainder is divided up between the prisoner's family and a trust fund that he receives on completing his sentence. Some of North Caro lina's working prisoners: Harry Rivenbark, 57, a forger, tears down automobiles in a Raleigh junkyard.

"You have a feeling of security out here," says Rivenbark. "There's not someone breathing down your neck. We don't have to worry about a thing. We turn in our check, and that settles everything." Charles Barham, 23, convicted of breaking and entering, makes $50 a week as a cook at a cafe across from the North Carolina State College campus in Raleigh.

Says he: "It bothered me at first -- getting locked up at night. I've got used to it now, and it's just another day. The girls coming in -- that's the most tempting part, but I'll be out in February." Bobby Medley, 18, convicted of forcible trespassing, performed so well on the job at the Beacon Motel and Restaurant outside Raleigh that he was hired when he was paroled last week. Said Motel Owner G. G. Frazier: "I'm going to use more prisoners in the future. They're harder workers and better than those that come in off the street for a job." So far as is known, no prisoner has ever committed a crime while at work. Seven percent have been classified as "escapees" -- a term that covers everything from leaving work to visit a friend to outright flight -- and all have been returned to prison. Of convicts who have worked in the program and served their terms, only a handful have got into trouble after their release. Eventually, Randall hopes to have 1,000 prisoners outside on the job. Says he: "Under the old concept, prison was supposed to degrade a man --the ball and chain, stripes, things like that. Now we try to build him up. And as a dollars-and-cents proposition, it's a good thing for the taxpayer. The prisoner on work release actually pays his way through prison."

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