DEER LODGE - Believe it or not, this bustling warehouse is part of the Montana State Prison. There’s a program here that lets prisoners use their skills and helps their time go by much more smoothly.
Inside the prison workshop keeping 180 inmates productive:
“So, idle hands are the devil's workshop, so the busier the inmates can be, the more we can get them doing programming, going to the gym, going to the yard, getting them out doing activities, the better off we are,” Warden Jim Salmonsen said.
The Montana Correctional Enterprises provides on-the-job training and work experience for inmates at the prison. Inmates work in agriculture, the maintenance shop, woodwork and other skilled labor.
Phillip Bruinsma will likely spend the rest of his life in prison after his 2017 conviction on rape charges. Instead of wallowing in a cell, he uses his woodworking skills at the prison’s furniture shop.
"I can decompress from being in prison, so I can come out here and I can literally get away from the world, get away from the prison, come in here, do my thing, my artwork,” Bruinsma said.
The program gives prisoners the motivation to avoid ending up in high-security areas where problematic inmates are constantly under guard and have limited freedom.
“I mean these are the worst of the population here. It’s as high as it goes; this is the end of the road, as people would say,” Correctional Officer Collyn Server said.
The warden believes the MCE program, which hires about 180 inmates, will keep inmates on the straight and narrow road.
“The inmates out here are highly motivated and actually doing something very productive with their time,” Salmonsen said.
