Worthy skills

Slaughter plant provides inmate training

March 20, 2007

By Mary Odden/Copper River Record

PALMER - Until 2003, when its management was turned over to the Department of Natural Resources under the Frank Murkowski administration, Mount McKinley Meat and Sausage plant in Palmer had been managed by Correctional Industries through the Alaska Department of Corrections.

It was an important inmate rehabilitation and vocational training program for low-security prisoners within a year or six months of release.

What most Alaskans may not realize is that MMMS still trains inmates, it is still managed by the same staff, and the staff helps put inmates to work after their sentences are completed.

MMMS Production Manager Jim Crigger, one of a three-person staff that provides all the management, training and supervision at the plant, estimates the slaughterhouse has trained more than 100 of the meat-cutters working in stores and wholesale meat cutting around Alaska. And many more inmate-employees at MMMS learned work ethics and cooperation - skills that have sustained them in society and kept them out of jail.

That is significant when the average cost of incarceration for one individual in the Alaska prison system exceeds $40,000 per year.

&#8220This work turns a lot of these guys around. As long as they know they've got something out there that they can be productive at, then we don't see them back again,” said Earl Hauser, assistant superintendent at the Palmer Correctional Center. &#8220We don't need their business. We'd rather that they don't come back.”

Now overseen by the Division of Agriculture, which dictates pricing of products and what the slaughter plant pays farmers for their animals, the slaughter plant is expected to operate like a business and turn a profit for the state, or at least keep its hands out of the Agricultural Revolving Loan Fund.

MMMS famously exceeded its budget by $150,000 in 2005, and the Division of Agriculture, under Gov. Murkowski appointee Larry DeVilbiss, stepped up a many-years-long effort to off-load the operation into the private sector - still without takers.

On the agriculture side, testimony from farmers and farm organizations is strongly in support of the continued operation of the slaughterhouse, one of only two USDA-qualified agricultural killing floors and meat production facilities in the state.

The plant butchers around 1,200 animals a year for local growers. Some say their farms would fail without the services provided by MMMS.

On the corrections side, the facility has never stopped training inmates for the state, though people will not presently find official recognition of MMMS under &#8220Alaska Correctional Industries.”

MMMS is not even mentioned on the corrections Web site, though it trains inmates and provides custom meat processing and products to 11 prisons and correctional facilities, as well as to the general public.

And MMMS's built-in inmate-employee turnover and intense training regiment are not noted by the Division of Agriculture as significant cost factors at the facility.

With &#8220about a hundred years of combined experience in meat-cutting,” plant manager Frank Huffman and production managers Jim Crigger and Ernie Dimond manage all the slaughtering, processing, ordering, selling of products from MMMS, as well as the training and supervision of inmate/employees.

Safety and health rules are primary at this USDA-certified killing floor and meat-processing plant, especially since the nationwide Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points regulations engaged in 2000, encompassing new procedures and record-keeping related to mad-cow disease and E-coli bacteria.

&#8220Everything in here is related to being safe, or being humane,” said Crigger. &#8220The training concentrates on that. What HACCP is, is that you analyze all the things that you do. So it is how you clean your facility, how clean you keep the facility all the time, how you control cross-contaminations and all that. And it is adhered to. I don't care what guy it is - maybe a brand new guy - if he breaks the rules, we get in trouble. So we stay on top of this all the time.”

Dimond agreed.

&#8220The guys who come down here to work, whether they've picked up a knife yet or not, are expected to comply with industry standards and hit the floor running so that we can keep operating - because this is a business, too, with critical health and safety guidelines,” he said. &#8220This isn't like a hobby shop or something where it doesn't matter.”

There is no correctional officer on site during the workday, and the gate to MMMS is wide open. Those who work at the facility say a basic respect for each other, acknowledgment of authority based on knowledge and experience, and the critical importance of safety and health rules all contribute to the facility's success as a training program.

Trained inmates train new or less-experienced staff. Experience and skill add up to increased responsibility and authority. The positions of lead supervisor on the killing floor and production floor are held by inmates who train and supervise their eventual replacements, as well as the other jobs in their sections. Huffman, Crigger and Dimond promote and support this hierarchy of authority, because they say it is real-world, and it works.

&#8220My philosophy is, since it is my job to make sure that these guys know what they are doing and they are safe, then once this guy is trained and we get a new guy, then he's the one that's going to train the new guy,” said Dimond. &#8220And I'm going to watch that and oversee that. It's not only going to help his social skills, but it's going to help him do what he's doing better - because you always get better when you teach.

&#8220Some of these guys don't like their peers telling them what to do. They aren't used to that - maybe they never had to do it before. But this is a business and they have to learn it.

&#8220Wilbur over there is the foreman. He is very close to being a journeyman meat cutter. He could get a job anywhere now. He knows the safety and the federal guidelines, too. And it is his job to run this area of the processing. I could go over there and micromanage it, but he wouldn't learn anything and neither would anyone else.”

The 10 to 12 inmates who provide the work force for MMMS come down each morning from &#8220the hill,” Palmer Correctional Center, where they have earned their right to minimum supervision and paid employment. Most of them are at the very end of their incarceration period, with a year or six months to go.

At MMMS, they earn anywhere from 80 cents to $1.40 an hour. Their work day starts at 7 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m., with two 15-minute breaks and a 30-minute lunch hour.

And the range of what an employee learns at MMMS is greater than in most any other meat-production facility in the country - because it reaches from cows, sheep, pigs and reindeer live on the hoof to meat product cut, wrapped and in a box.

Matt Rossi, a soft-voiced young man who grew up in Oregon and California, says he'd never worked around animals or done &#8220anything like this, ever in my life.” Frank Huffman taught him how to gut animals, and he's done various jobs on the killing and processing floors.

His most challenging project? A 2,600-pound bull. Rossi says he knows the skills he's acquired &#8220are better than we could get anywhere else,” because in the big slaughter places, it is mass production, and an employee might only learn one thing.

Several of those interviewed told the story of an expert meat-cutter who visited MMMS from an Iowa beef packers plant. Because the MMMS staff and inmates knew the IBP plant slaughtered 2,500 to 3,000 animals a day, they were all set to learn some new skills from the man. He did demonstrate how to pull the &#8220H” bone - pelvic bone - out of the carcass. And he was &#8220awesome fast” - the bone was out in seconds - and &#8220it was clean,” said Crigger.

But that was all he knew how to do. The expert hadn't the slightest idea of what to do with a whole carcass.

Not everyone who acquires skills at MMMS plans to look for meat-production work. Crigger estimates that about two out of 10 inmates trained at the slaughter plant will go on and work in the meat-production industry. Some may not take anything other than some shined-up work habits and social skills. Some may take other kinds of specialized knowledge they've gleaned from the facility.

Keith Layland of Cantwell said the skills he plans to put to work from his training at Mt. McKinley are those of a warehouseman - stocking shelves and taking orders, filling and weighing pallets, loading vans, and shipping product around the state. He's been the dockman at MMMS for several months, and will leave when his jail term ends on May 2.

While Layland talked about his job, Dimond came in to get details about a 5,000-pound order Layland has prepared and palletized for shipment. The exchange between the two men demonstrates Layland's responsibility and skill in his job.

Layland said he wanted to encourage people to stop in and get a price list and buy fresh meat - or bring their animals in for custom butchering. He's proud of MMMS and the services he and the other employees provide.

&#8220Some of the people in the jail might think we come down here every day and don't do much,” he said. &#8220But if they went from where the animals came in and where they finish, wrapped and in boxes and put on shelves or on a pallet to ship out, then they'd be like ‘wow.'”

Killing floor supervisor Dustin Harrison, like Layland, is a lifelong Alaskan. Harrison said many things about MMMS surprised him when he came down from the hill.

&#8220I don't remember what I thought about all the regulations,” he said. &#8220But what surprised me most was that it was a business with customers coming in every day. I thought it was part of the jail.”

Harrison was also surprised, but not dismayed, at learning from and deferring to other inmates at the facility, instead of just the front office managers.

&#8220They told me when I got here, ‘Hey, this guy knows what he's doing. He's your boss,'” he said. &#8220I'd never worked for anybody else before - only for myself. So that was different. And now it's the same way with me when somebody new shows up. They tell them, ‘Dustin knows what he's talking about.'”

Harrison now supervises four inmates and works closely with the federal USDA inspector who is on the floor during every slaughter operation.

&#8220If they come out of jail without hope, you can't expect them to change anything,” Dimond said. &#8220They are going to go back and do what they know. If they've got hope, then it's like any human being - then they've got a start.”

Statements from experienced inmate-employees, expressing responsibility for their jobs and their co-workers, easily could jar an outsider's idea about inmates.

Wilber Bowlin of Kasilof, a few years older than some of the other inmates, is a man with many job skills: 18 years as a commercial fisherman, a skilled mechanic and welder.

He is lead man on the production floor, and a fine meat-cutter who can reduce a quarter of beef into perfect steaks, roasts and ribs in a matter of minutes. He learned his new skills from the production lead man before him, and from Ernie Dimond.

Bowlin is frank about the drinking and driving that landed him a jail sentence - twice. He also talked about his choice to never drink again, and the life he looks forward to when he is out of jail in two months. He says he doesn't associate with many inmates, because he doesn't like their behavior.

But he does enjoy surprises.

&#8220Sometimes I am very surprised,” he said. &#8220You can see a person that you just know is not going to make it. And he gets down here and his whole attitude changes, to where everything is good.”

Bowlin said he is always working on his future, finding information on materials for a meat-cutting business or collecting schematics for cutting different kinds of animals.

&#8220There's not many people that can cut reindeer to specs, but I can do that very well now,” he said.

Inmate-employees say that the &#8220guys up front” actively recommend their skilled employees to businesses around the state, and then keep track of them.

&#8220When a guy leaves here and he's got a job and doing well, you get feedback,” Bowlin says.

Barbara Kouris, who, with her husband Teddy Kouris has operated Teddy's Meats in Anchorage for 30 years, says MMMS has sent them good employees.

&#8220We have hired several people who were trained at Mt. McKinley,” she said, &#8220and they were well-trained, well-prepared. They knew how to get to work on time and they were good workers.”

Kouris dismisses the idea that MMMS is in competition with her private sector meat-cutting and selling operation.

Greg Giannulis of Mike's Meats in Eagle River says the state slaughter plant, which sells wholesale and retail meats as well as supplying correctional facilities, is technically in the same business he is, but, he said &#8220they don't bother my business at all.”