Fresh produce, fresh start for Salt Lake County inmates

From The Salt LakeTribune:

Photo: Salt Lake County Jail inmate George Raska weeds onions and look for pests working in the jail's 1.5 acre garden. Inmates grow everything from blackberries to tomatoes, peppers and flowers in the diverse garden. The jail's gardening program teaches inmates job skills and helps them reintegrate into society. (Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune)

When Kevin Long and George Raska talk about their daily routine, they interrupt each other with excitement. They mention the sunshine, the healthy food, the educational opportunities, the trust — not exactly what you’d expect to hear from a couple of inmates at a county jail.

But, as Sgt. Michael Johnson said, the Salt Lake County Jail’s horticulture program "is about as different as you can get" when it comes to the realm of corrections.

The Excellence in Gardening program, which consists of 10 hours of class time and months of hands-on experience, is designed to instill in inmates a work ethic and teach them job skills as they maintain the jail’s 1.5-acre organic garden. The inmates maintain the garden in shifts, with half of them working in the morning and the other half taking over in the afternoon. Only minimum-security, nonviolent offenders are selected for the program.

The inmates receive initial training from Katie Wagner, an assistant professor at Utah State University’s extension program, and two horticulturists help guide them through their daily tasks. Other than that, the inmates are responsible for the upkeep of the garden. They pull weeds, amend the soil, monitor the irrigation system, identify and eliminate pests, harvest the produce and sell it at the Downtown Farmers Market on Saturdays.

Raska, who was incarcerated in January, has worked in the garden for just over a month and gushes about it at every opportunity.

"It’s a great program," he said. "It really is. There’s freedom involved. You feel like a regular human being, not just an inmate. Plus I’m paying back my debt to society, and that’s the most important thing."

Long, who has been in jail for four months and in the horticulture program for two, echoed those sentiments.

"All the sergeants, all the officers, they’re great when they come out here with us," Long said. "It really does make you feel more like a man out here to be entrusted with this responsibility. This is the one program desired by every inmate. This is the program that everyone wants to be in, and there’s only 16 of us out of 2,300."

Long said he initially thought the garden was a myth, and he and Raska were thrilled when they were selected for the program. Without it, they would have to endure a life more typically associated with jail life.

"It’s almost like the movie ‘Groundhog Day,’  " Raska said of jail. "If you don’t have a good job assignment, you just have to try to find a way to fill all those hours on a daily basis. It’s a pretty monotonous routine."

Read the rest of the story here.