By Dylan Whitely
Walking around Northwestern, students might notice a couple different workers wearing orange jumpsuits.
Northwestern and the Bill Johnson Correctional Center, a prison for men convicted of drug-related offenses, have a partnership that allows inmates nearing the end of their program to work on campus.
Two inmates from the prison, located east of Alva on Flynn Street, have been working around campus since the beginning of summer. Northwestern hasn’t had inmates in a few years because of the pandemic, but the partnership started again this semester.
Northwestern was one of the first entities in Alva to get inmate workers when the program started back up.
Northwestern Executive Vice President Dr. David Pecha said the program has been successful.
“Once they get on campus, there is a list of items that they are approved to work on,” Pecha said. “Most of ours, especially in the summer, are different yard tasks.”
The inmates’ duties include activities such as cleaning flower beds, mowing grass, edging and weed-eating. During the colder months, they have tasks indoors they can do.
Pecha said the university tries to keep the inmates away from faculty and students.
For-profit businesses are not eligible to host inmate workers. Places like Northwestern, the City of Alva, and nearby state parks such as Little Sahara and the Great Salt Plains have had inmate workers before.
Rochelle Province, an employee at the prison, said there are a number of factors prison staff look into before letting an inmate outside the prison walls to work. Among those factors are the inmate’s security level, the crime committed and how he has behaved around the facility.
While some are released to go outside the walls to work, those who are not fit to do so will work jobs around the facility, Province said.
All the inmates are monitored before they go out to work for different places. Inmates will have a job in the facility for at least 30 to 60 days before they can move on to a job outside the walls. Once they have met the criteria, then they are allowed to go out and work, Province said.
Northwestern has an employee trained by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to oversee the inmates while they are on campus. The employee is in charge of checking the inmates out from prison, bringing them to campus in a van and taking them back to prison at the end of the day.
If something happens at the prison such as a lockdown, the university cannot check out inmates for the day.
“The corrections folks have the rules and the guidelines that we have to follow as a partner agency,” Pecha said.
The university would take more workers, but it is only allowed to have a certain number of inmates per the agreement, Pecha said.