Making good use of prison labor

[brewmonkey]

Roger is a good guy and a retired 1SG. He is now the VA rep for one of the local colleges.

Lansing Correctional Facility inmates are used to fixing up bikes for children all around the area.

But a dozen mountain bicycles they've made sure are mechanically sound -- as well as good looking -- should soon be on the way to South America. Later, more of them should be shipped to Army and Air National Guard units serving in Iraq.

And when the soldiers come home, the intent is to leave the bicycles for the local population to use, said Lt. Col. Dave Jacobs, an administrative officer for the adjutant general's office in Topeka.

Jacobs made arrangements with LCF Warden Dave McKune to pick up the refurbished bicycles Friday in the parking lot of LCF's East Unit.

Both men called the exchange a "win-win" situation.

An eight-man crew of minimum-custody inmates take bikes donated to the prison and make them look -- and ride -- like new.

In early December, prison officials held the second yearly bike giveaway, providing about 220 bicycles to local agencies as well as those as from the surrounding area. Many of the agencies, as well as local folks, donate bicycles no longer being used, so the project can be ongoing.

Carla Schermbeck, administrator at the East Unit, and Tracy Ashton, who heads the program, remember the literal mountain of bikes heaped on the prison grounds that day.

Schermbeck estimates there were as many as 600 to 700 bikes ready for repair. They ran out of room at the East Unit and took many of them to the former North Unit that McKune said can be used only for storage after the 1993 flood.

McKune said he got the idea of donating bikes to soldiers after he got an e-mail from a fellow bicycle rider, Roger Harrison. Harrison, a Leavenworth resident, was looking for inexpensive bikes for his wife and her fellow soldiers.

His wife, Command Sgt. Major Jana Harrison, was deployed to Iraq with members of the 169th Corps Support Battalion. McKune contacted Roger Harrison and told him there was no need to buy bikes when the prison had a ready supply. That informal agreement started the ball rolling.

McKune said he started thinking that other soldiers could also use bicycles, and he asked Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz to take to state officials. The idea was broached to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who turned it over to the Adjutant General's office to implement a program.

Since then, Jacobs said, they'd picked up a few loads of bicycles and intend to begin doing it more.

He expects the 12 mountain bicycles he picked up Friday to go overseas.

"The goal at this point is to get the bikes ready to go," Jacobs said. That means packing them into the proper containers for military shipment -- on a space available basis, he noted.

"We can't use the government money just to pack up bikes and send them over," he said, "so to send them at military expense, we have to get them into the space available."

Jacobs is hopeful that as things quiet down in Iraq, soldiers will have more time to "actually get on bicycles and ride."

He would have loved to have had this kind of program about a year ago, when he was on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. The intent then was to find bicycles for the local people.

"We wanted to find them for the local inhabitants, who had no transportation and no fuel," Jacobs said, "and some kids needed bicycles to go to school."

That's why the intent is to leave the bicycles behind, whether they're in South America, Iraq or other areas of the world.

"This is really a unique partnership with us and the prison system right now," Jacobs said. "They have a product, a service, and as a customer, we have a place for them to go."

Michael Long, a member of the eight-man crew who refurbished the bikes, said they picked the best bicycles available for the project.

Another crew member, Richard Blevins, said they strip down all bicycles they get to make sure they're "mechanically sound before they're cosmetically sound."

McKune and Jacobs praised the men's efforts as they loaded and tied the bikes onto Jacobs' trailer.