Jones Farm

Jones Farm is one of 14 prison farms run by the State Department of Corrections and worked by minimum security prisoners. The state's prison farm supply all the pork 50 to 60 percent of the milk and 10 percent of the beef used by New Jersey's corrections and human services institutions and at a savings Corrections officials say of three hundred thousand dollars a year over what they would have to pay in the open market. And this year after some very hard times officials say that the state prison farms appear to be in the black. Jones Farm is a hog and dairy farm it's 125 cows produce about twenty four hundred quarts of milk a day. Milk that's gathered and past your eyes by prisoners Jones farms workers have to pass the tightest entrance frustrations of all prison farms. Prisoners spend two weeks at the yard of the reception unit and then are assigned to the farm where they will serve their sentence prisoners a Jones Farm cannot be serving sentences of more than five years and they cannot be serving time for violent crimes. Most of the men of Joan's farm were numbers runners bookies or possessors of drugs. There's a temptation to call this a country club prison and it does seem a lot more pleasant more

healthy than what we're used to seeing. But make no mistake about it this is a prison. A prison without bars or walls and a prison with the added temptation of a major highway just a stone's throw away. We had mail call at about 9:45 and the. Person in a letter from home and about 15 minutes we've gone down. He was apprehended. He would have been home so evident he might have been something and let it. Go on is what I mean it wasn't a planned escape to no longer be a minimum custody would be maximum class. He'll be sentenced to the wall. That's what prisoners call maximum security lock ups like Trenton State and wrong way. That's where they are afraid they'll end up if they as they say mess up the Jones Farm. It's a prospect they hardly relish yet as inmates like Ken Carter who is serving one to one and a half are numbers running say Jones Farm is no bed of roses either.

Throughout. The world. This is Carter's second time a Jones Farm he was here in 1984 and I asked him if he sees any changes for them. Which they were denied as an explanation. Well I don't know any of that that should affect the men that are here now and though and 74 they had a different criteria than the men that were out here were out there with you know violent crimes and so on. Now all the men here are have missed the work release and furlough criteria were tightened in 1986 after an inmate on leave not from Jones Farm was linked to a murder. Last May only one hundred twenty two inmates from the entire prison system were on work release. None was from Jones Farm. Lieutenant William Killingsworth agrees that it would be a good idea to bring back a work release program for

Jones Farm inmates cooking. Yes I've been in mine. At Jones Farm the men earn time off from their sentences for working at the farm. One day off for every five days work plus additional time for good behavior. They're paid a dollar 10 to 250 per day. Not bad wages for a New Jersey prison inmate The average prison wages a dollar twenty few if any of the prisoners go on to become farmers or most have experienced a life quite foreign from what they have been used to since most of them come from urban areas. Some have to go but some are actually frightened of the animals has never been around them. The cows and the pigs. They've been shown some fear. And some of them are. Against the good. And somewhat fascinated by the mammals. I don't suppose there's any kind of affection that develops between the guys who are in here in the capital.

Sure there are techniques that you have to use in order locales every day are you going to get the hell knocked out of one of those techniques including. Getting to know your cow and cows getting to know you. Being gentle with him. If the Jones Farm inmates seem happier than most convicts it probably does have something to do with the fresh air and looser security here. But mostly it's because they won't be here long. Freedom is not so far away as it is for somebody who's doing a long stretch for a violent crime somebody who faces years with no rights on the farm the men aren't happy but they are crushed by the wall. I'm Steve Taylor.