Hearing up today over inmate jobs PETER SHINKLE Publication Date: October 17, 1995 When he was warden over Dixon Correctional Institute, Burl Cain had inmates process chickens for a private company and raise horses for sale. Cain wound up at the center of controversy. Now, after becoming warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola earlier this year, Cain is again taking heat over his use of inmate labor, this time to relabel cans for a private company. U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola is to hold a hearing today to look into allegations that an Angola inmate lost his prison job after raising questions about the legality of the can-relabeling plant's operations. Cain defends his efforts to mix private enterprise and state prisons, saying costs are cut, inmates get some income and training and they stay out of trouble. "The public or the legislative auditor or the press is not content with us doing any work with the private sector, it seems," the 52-year-old warden said Monday. Cain said his efforts to find work for inmates have gone against the grain, prompting unjustified suspicions that he or others are enriching themselves. The experience has disappointed him, he said. "If you want to do well in government and civil service, don't rock the boat, don't do anything, don't be progressive," he said. "This is probably my last hurrah with private industry because you end up accused of being a crook," he said. "I'm tired of getting beat on." The relabeling plant at Angola, run by the private Louisiana Agri-Can Co. under contract with the state, started operating without the permit required by state law, a state public health official said last week. The official said he did not bar the company from sending re-labeled cans out of the prison, and an Angola deputy warden said last Thursday he believed the plant was still operating.

But Cain said Monday the plant actually has been closed since Sept. 15. "If it's not right, I don't want to be operating it," he said. Cain declined to comment on the allegations by Angola inmate William Kissinger, who claims he lost his job as a legal adviser to other inmates after he sent a federal agency a letter questioning whether the plant was illegally replacing expiration labels. Kissinger also questioned whether the pay rate was legal. The state pays inmates up to 10 cents per hour to work for the company, Cain said. Cain said he brought in the re-labeling operation because he needed to find work for inmates after AT&T pulled out of a decade-old contract last year. Louisiana Agri-Can part-owner Michael Sullivan of Stockton,Calif., said Monday the plant has not removed any expiration labels improperly. State officials questioned why some documents on pallets of Carnation milk bore the words "Bad Date Code," but Sullivan said the documents referred only to a "cosmetic problem" on the cans. Cain said when he began looking for a private employer to come to Angola, he turned to the same people who have a state contract for inmates to process chicken at the prison Cain used to run, Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson. Sullivan also is a part-owner on Crawfish Unlimited Inc., the company that runs the chicken processing plant. As with Louisiana Agri-Can, Crawfish Unlimited's use of inmate labor has prompted questions. The state Legislative Auditor reported that Crawfish Unlimited saved $3.3 million in labor costs from January 1993 to February 1994. But Dr. Charles Kleinpeter, head of the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections' prison enterprises division, said that calculation was based on standard labor rates, and inmates are compensated at a much lower rate. In addition, the $3.3 million figure is inaccurate because inmates are less productive than other workers, Kleinpeter said.

When a legislative committee subpoenaed tax returns and other financial documents from Crawfish Unlimited in late August, the company filed suit in state court to fight the subpoena. But last week the company dropped the suit and released the papers, Legislative Auditor Dan Kyle said. His investigation is continuing, he said. Another one of Cain's ventures blending prisons and private industry started in 1982. That was when he gave his wife a Percheron stallion, which turned out to be a national champion. Cain said he later turned the horse over to the state so it could be bred to produce horses for use by guards and for use pulling wagons at prisons. The horse, Greanlea Comet, eventually sired over 20 foals, and some of the program's horses are now serving the New Orleans Police Department, Cain said. But late last year, the legislative auditor said in a report that the horse program had cost prison enterprises $448,000. "That was a bald-faced lie," Cain said. That calculation included the cost of correctional officers who had to be at work at the prison, whether or not they supervised inmates working on horses, Cain said. In yet another effort to mix prisons and private enterprise, Cain in 1992 signed a personal business contract with a company that wanted to use Dixon inmates to run a waste recycling plant. But Cain, who with an associate eventually invested $58,000 in the company, said the company eventually changed its plans. Last year, Cain sued the company, alleging it gave him false information when it sought his investment. Officials of the company, Controlled Recycling Equipment Inc.,denied the allegation and claimed that Cain himself had harmed the company by starting a competing business.