Inmates in yellow jumpsuits have been seen cleaning up sections of local roadways this week.
Wildwood Correctional Center Acting Superintendent Shannon McCloud says the program was started five years ago.
McCloud: “I noticed all the guys out here were getting pretty bored with just sitting around doing nothing and the community needed some help with trash pick-up. I think years ago they hired kids to pick up trash but they didn’t start until like June or July and the tourist season was coming up so I thought ‘Hey, how about we get some inmates out there to help start picking up trash’ so we found some inmates who had crimes like theft or they were getting out soon and they raised their hands and said we’ll do it.”
She says the roadway trash clean-up program helps demonstrate life lessons to the inmates…
McCloud: “The first year that we did it it was right by the dump, everything had blown into the trees and they had to work really really hard and they picked everything up. Then a couple weeks later they went out to do another job and they noticed people had dropped things on the highway again and they said that really makes me mad and I said, ‘Really? That’s a common response when you’ve cleaned up something and someone’s ruining it for you, that’s how the general public feels when you do something bad to them’.”
McCloud says the prisoners are monitored and do not clean up residential areas, they mostly pick-up trash on the highways and connecting roadways around Kenai and Soldotna through about June.
Wildwood also has inmate public service programs that have made benches and signs for local parks, and gets prisoners out to shovel snow from around fire hydrants in the winter.