Ex-offenders and young adults work on the Garden Project’s 14-acre farm in San Mateo County, Calif. The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department is one of the project’s sponsors. (Photo by Sogolon Djata)

South of San Francisco in San Mateo County, Cathrine Sneed, described by a colleague as an “obsessive, hands-on mentor,” runs the Garden Project, which began in 1982 with the goal of rehabilitating the San Francisco County jail’s male and female offenders by teaching them organic-food farming. Since 1992 the project has focused its training efforts on ex-offenders to prepare them for their real-world transition, and six years ago it expanded to include at-risk youth.

“We now call them ‘apprentices,’” said Sneed of the 56 ex-offenders and young adults she supervises 40 hours a week on a 14-acre farm. Last year they grew 25 tons of vegetables, which were donated to more than 15 local organizations, including food banks and after-school programs, easing the city’s budget pressures.

“Some get the horticulture bug,” said Eileen Hirst, chief of staff for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, one of the project’s sponsors, who has seen participants enroll in school to learn more. Some end up working for the city. “A regular paycheck and benefits — that’s a pretty heady experience,” she said.

Correctional facilities throughout the U.S. are beginning to see the value of food and farming initiatives, especially sustainable ones, to inmates and society.

Incarcerated men and women who work in U.S. prison farm programs, which vary in size from one acre to hundreds of acres, see their harvest sold to the private sector, used to provide healthier options for inmate populations or donated to local food banks and other nonprofit organizations. They also gain a repurposed life by learning new skills and experiencing the catharsis of communing with nature.

Laurie Ballew, environmental planner for McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington state’s southern Puget Sound, says food gardens give offenders the opportunity to be “in the dirt, growing something,” from seed to kitchen, and “it gives them a sense of pride and a lot of learning.”

A garden plot tended by inmates at McNeil Island Corrections Center in Washington’s southern Puget Sound. (Photo courtesy of MICC)

Inmate Bret Lindholm says he likes the hard work, “outside in the fresh air” at McNeil Island, and echoes Ballew’s notion of pride and accomplishment. Most of all, he adds in an e-mail sent by a prison official, he enjoys “utilizing waste by composting,” which is the process of using decayed plant and animal material to enrich the soil.

McNeil’s one-acre sustainable farm was launched a year ago with help from Evergreen State College. A handful of inmates were trained in fundamental soil science and composting and, working six hours a day, five days a week, have harvested 2,500 pounds of onions, cabbage and lettuce. That isn’t enough to feed 1,200 inmates, but the yield saves 10 percent of the total food budget, and prison cooks use the produce in soups and salads.

“But the point is really job preparation,” says Hirst. “A lot of it is training someone to do a job, any job, and learn basic life skills, and that can’t be taken for granted if you’re dealing with people who’ve never had a job before.”

One in 31 American adults, about 7.3 million in 2008, was either on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole. Many of those seeking to reintegrate into society struggle to find a job for which they’re qualified. Without marketable skills to rely on, some will return to a life of crime and may find themselves behind bars again.

Training programs that teach trade skills to inmates “have cut the recidivism rate in half,” based on recent internal tracking at Colorado Correctional Industries, a 100-year-old division of the Colorado Department of Corrections, says Jim Heaston, CCI’s agribusiness manager for the past two years.

At CCI’s minimum-security facility 1 mile east of Cañon City, 500 to 600 inmates work 12 hours daily on the farm, milking more than 1,800 dairy cows and goats, cultivating 500 acres of corn for cattle feed and working in the fish hatchery, where Whole Foods-bound tilapia is reared. Most of the farm’s output is sold, generating revenue to cover CCI’s operating costs. The inmates turned farmers earn 60 cents a day to start, and after 60 to 90 days, their rate increases to $1.20.

“The inmates can apply for a job at any dairy, and they’ll have the knowledge and skills required,” Heaston says. He says the farm also reduces taxpayer costs, since fewer daytime security staffers are needed to guard participating inmates. And the prison’s milk prices remain low, as a result of in-house production and supply.

New York City’s 13,000-inmate jail complex on Rikers Island has offered inmates a school-like horticultural program since early 2008; it’s run by Hilda Krus, director of Greenhouse for the Horticultural Society of New York. Two hundred or so “sentenced people,” as Krus calls them, and detainees, who are awaiting sentencing, learn herb and vegetable farming on a small plot or in a pot, perennial and tree planting, and the difference between conventionally versus organically grown food. In the winter months, her “students” attend classes. During the warmer months, they tend a two-acre garden.

They also have the opportunity to work as interns after their release as part of HSNY’s the Green Team, where they’re paid a stipend for three to nine months. “If we offered to train them but didn’t pay, that would be unrealistic,” Krus says. She recognizes their need to earn money and knows that the ability to do so reinforces the connection between training and successful living. Almost every inmate has a chance to be chosen, unless there is a persistent substance abuse problem or other crippling condition.

Jack DeNicola, general manager of the Lobster, an oceanside restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif., says one of his “greatest employees” was an illegal immigrant, Klaus Nielsen, who was forced to return to his native Denmark because of his status and criminal record. DeNicola has hired other ex-offenders and homeless people and would never hold the past against them, he says, as long as they’re qualified for the job and have cleaned themselves up. “All people deserve a second chance.”

In Europe, a few facilities have taken the next step by adding restaurant skills to the inmates’ rehabilitative résumés. The Clink, a stylish, year-old eatery in Surrey, England, serves dishes such as poached pollack fillet with broad beans to patrons who must undergo security checks and enter through the barred door of a prison — Her Majesty’s Prison High Down. The cooks and waitstaff are convicted criminals, but through food-related skills training, they’re learning a better way while still in prison.

The Garden Project gives Sneed firsthand knowledge about how such experiences can reshape lives. “They can transform things with their own hands,” she says of her charges. “I think it makes them feel very powerful.” She says she sees the change in them. Some go from not looking her in the eye when addressed to becoming very proud.

“They begin to grow,” she says. “Some people push drugs, but we push vegetables.”