Sewing plant is job training for inmates

Program offers prisoners a small stipend and the skills to adjust to work world after incarceration

ELIZABETH CITY -- Toby Love makes sure the bright orange safety vests are made properly. If there's anything wrong, the vest goes back to his North Carolina sewing plant.

Love serves as quality assurance for the sewing plant inside the Pasquotank Correctional Institution in Elizabeth City, part of a program that teaches prisoners work skills and helps prepare them for life after incarceration.

"We're working on truly becoming the Department of Correction," prison administrator Ricky Anderson told The Virginian-Pilot. "This out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing is in the past. We've got to do something because we can't keep building $80 (million) and $100 million prisons."

Love, who is serving time for robbery and kidnapping, is among three dozen inmates who, among other things, use computerized machines to stitch fabric or to design and embroider logos. He turned down an opportunity to transfer to a medium-security prison so he could continue at the sewing plant, where he has worked for nearly three years.

The shop turns out more than 300 safety vests a day for employees of the state Department of Transportation, the state Highway Patrol and roadside trash pickup volunteers, among others.

Thanks in part to the sewing program, the facility is among 10 prisons in North Carolina that were audited and accredited by the American Correctional Association. The group requires prisons to meet nearly 450 standards, Anderson said.

Similar programs exist at other prisons, including shops that manufacture cleaning chemicals, metal products, paint and eyeglasses, among other things.

The Pasquotank facility, in northeastern North Carolina, houses 968 male close-security inmates. It is run by a staff of 400, including 250 corrections officers.

To work in the sewing plant, an inmate must be interviewed and have had no infractions for at least three months, said plant manager Mike McIntyre. All workers are paid a small stipend. Love, for example, makes $14.97 a week to spend at the prison canteen.

Some inmates new to the program resent being corrected by another prisoner, said corrections officer Bob Kaldahl, who supervises the embroidery section.

"The other inmates chime in, 'Don't give him a hard time, just fix it,' " he said.