On a dreary August day, the
Wallkill Correctional Facility of New York State looms large against the
overcast sky. Approximately 80 miles north of Manhattan, Wallkill is a medium
security, 500-bed men’s facility that opened in 1932. Designed by renowned architect
Alfred Hopkins, the building’s gothic structure is impressive. The main
building, surrounded by razor wire, sits on acres of corn and soybean fields
and is adjacent to a maximum-security facility that backs into a horse farm for
retired thoroughbreds. Inmates from Wallkill tend the horses as part of their
offender workforce programs.
Though known for the manufacturing
of eyeglasses, the Wallkill facility boasts a robust recycling program that
functions as one of eight regional Hub Recycling Centers throughout the state
corrections system. The program was started in 2011 in order to comply with Executive Order No. 4 which was issued by Governor Andrew
Cuomo. This Executive Order established a State Green Procurement and Agency
Sustainability Program, and directed state agencies, public authorities, and
public benefit corporations to “green” procurements and implement
sustainability initiatives.
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), Division of Industries or "Corcraft", runs the recycling program. Over the last three fiscal years, the statewide program has processed over 39 thousand tons of recycled materials which resulted in approximately $5 million in cost diversion for waste hauling and tipping fees by diverting the waste from landfills. The sale of recycled materials on the open market during that time generated $1.6 million dollars in revenue, which was returned to Corcraft’s “enterprise account” to specifically support the continuation and growth of recycling throughout the New York DOCCS.
Inmates are employed in the daily
recycling of paper, cardboard, metals, and textiles. They run machines that
shred paper or crush plastics, tin, and aluminum, compress them into bales,
catalog and document the materials and tonnage, and drive forklifts to move the
bales to a storage warehouse before they are sold and shipped. On par with
other offender workforce programs, the inmates are paid .26 - .45 cents an hour
for their work. The enterprise account pays for this salary as well as
necessary equipment and other correctional personnel.
Recycling Work(s)
Wallkill’s Superintendent Tim
Laffin’s experience and authority is understated, but demonstrated as an inmate
rushes to tuck in his shirt when he sees the Superintendent approach. Mr.
Laffin has successfully imbedded recycling into the culture of the Wallkill
facility. Every inmate plays a role and has a personal responsibility to
separate their waste into compostable and recyclable materials. Inmates may be
cited for failure to separate waste, though the citation is rarely necessary.
One of the highlights of the program for Mr. Laffin is the real-world training
that the recycling program provides offenders. “We used to have a dairy
operation on the farm, but when you teach an inmate to milk a cow and then send
him back to Brooklyn, there’s not a lot of opportunity for employment.” Inmates
who work in the recycling facility gain experience with transferrable skills
such as driving a forklift, working in a warehouse, and operating other
machinery. One inmate who was to be released in the near future indicated that
he had a construction job lined up on the outside and had been able to leverage
his experience in the recycling program for that position.
Bob Kennedy, Assistant Commissioner of Correctional
Industries and Accreditation for the DOCCS is one of the creative forces behind
the recycling program. Kennedy is a
dynamic leader whose vision of recycling as an income-driven industry is key to
the program’s success. According
to the National Correctional Industries Association:
Correctional
Industries are the work programs in correctional facilities that provide real
world work experience to inmates, teaching them transferable job skills and
work ethic to help them prepare for post-release reentry and employment. They
are the only self-funded reentry support program in corrections – no
appropriated funds are required for their operation since they rely on revolving
funds from the income generated by the sale of the products and services they
produce through the program.
Kennedy says, “The
recycling program fits the Industries model due to the revenue generation, and
providing job skills to inmates who have met educational and other programming
needs while incarcerated.”
Challenges
At the Wallkill facility, the
recycling program is housed in buildings “outside the fence,” meaning that
the
inmates who work on recycling, though they are still on the grounds of the
correctional facility, are literally beyond the barbed wire security fence in
an unsecured area. This limits the number of inmates who are eligible to work
there. Each individual worker must have a High School Equivalency diploma or be
enrolled in a High School Equivalency Program and must meet specific security
requirements before being considered as a potential employee.
The recyclable materials
themselves are another source of concern. Tim
Bender, Assistant Director of Industries Resource Recovery who oversees the
statewide recycling program laments
the loss of the market for recycled mattresses. “They stopped taking them because
they were overwhelmed,” he says of the facility that had been purchasing the
collected mattresses. “We have to ship them to Arizona now, and that’s not cost
effective.” They are in the process of identifying a new buyer for this
lucrative material. Additionally, he says that the markets for some types of
plastics and cardboard have fallen off because China is no longer buying them in previous quantities.
Corcraft consistently bids out the sale of the recycled materials, searching
for the highest market value, which is key to the program’s continuation.
What’s next?
When asked to predict the future
of recyclables and where he is putting his money, Mr. Bender says, “Cardboard,
paper, and plastics are the meat and potatoes. I don’t see that changing
anytime soon. For corrections, a lot of the food vendors are moving away from
tin and metal packaging because of the safety issues and are starting to use
plastic pouches. The challenge with those is that they are hard to clean, but
they are a safer option.” No materials can be recycled if they are soiled, so
as part of the process, inmates wash and dry all plastics and metals before
they are added to the recycling waste. This creates an opportunity for
correctional facilities to drive the market by encouraging vendors to create
packaging that is safe, but also recyclable.
Though recycling in correctional
facilities is not news, New York’s DOCCS has figured out how to make the
program income-driven while offering a practical workforce training option for
offenders. The program not only removes trash from landfills, but also saves
taxpayers millions of dollars each year. Having the program run by Corcraft
puts it in the hands of administrators whose directive is to run a successful
business. In this case, success is defined by the program paying for itself,
and reaching Governor Cuomo’s goal to reduce 50% (by weight) of waste generated
across all government departments. When asked if they have been able to achieve
that goal, Mr. Bender grins and says, “Not yet. But we’re getting there.” With
last year’s total recycled tonnage at more than 13,000 tons, even if that’s not
quite 50%, it’s an accomplishment many state correctional systems would be
happy to report. [GP]
Watch a narrated slide show of our visit to Wallkill on the GreenPrisons.org Youtube page.
