Work release program providing benefits

This year, the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Northeast District and the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center (WERDCC) in Vandalia are celebrating 10 years of work with the incarcerated personnel work release program. The program, which is a joint effort between MoDOT and the Missouri Department of Corrections, allows inmates who are nearing their release time to obtain valuable job training while also allowing MoDOT to accomplish tasks that otherwise may not be completed. Examples of such tasks include mowing, trimming, litter pickup, landscape maintenance and other odd jobs.
The program started in MoDOT’s Northeast District with a single crew of eight offenders in August 1998. Throughout the following 10 years it grew to four crews. This month, a fifth is being added. 
“We are very proud of this program and the employees that oversee these crews,” said MoDOT Roadside Manager Chris Shulse. “The value that MoDOT and the taxpayers receive from gaining this labor force cannot be measured in dollars alone. We have an opportunity to provide the offenders with skills that will help them become productive citizens when they re-enter society.” 
MoDOT pays the Department of Corrections $7.50 or $9.38 per day (depending on workday length) for each offender participating in the program.
To participate, offenders must have good custody status, no pending disciplinary actions and be minimum custody or security. Additionally, they must be a low-risk offender and that limits utilizing the men’s facility at Bowling Green, which has few offenders that meet this requirement. The women’s facility in Vandalia is very convenient for MoDOT since the inmates must return to the Department of Corrections’ custody at the end of each workday. There are minimum-security facilities for men at several locations in Missouri that are utilized by MoDOT for the program. One of these is the facility in Pacific that provides offender labor to MoDOT’s St. Louis Metro District.
Work Release is a program that benefits everyone:  the taxpayer, the Department of Corrections, the offenders and MoDOT. 
For more information about this or other transportation issues, call MoDOT during normal business hours at 1-888-275-6636 or visit MoDOT’s Web site at www.modot.org/northeast.