Catalog offers prison products

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HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- Internet shopping knows no boundaries, not even for products made behind bars.

Maryland Correctional Enterprises, the manufacturing division of the state Division of Correction, has put its 182-page catalog online. Now anyone can see, if not buy, hundreds of items the agency offers for sale to government agencies and Maryland nonprofit organizations. The catalog is at www.dpscs.state.md.us/mce/.

Products include institutional clothing, bedding, clocks, signs and furniture. Nearly half the pages are filled with furniture, including the Slammer table, designed for correctional environments and named "because they put them in the slammer," said Jeff Beeson, executive director of Maryland Correctional Enterprises' board of directors.

Topping the furniture offerings is the Traditional Veneer Line, with prices up to $1,885 for a U-shaped desk.

There's pure Maryland pride in the Canton Collection. It features nearly three dozen pieces made from scratch -- unlike some of the other lines that are merely assembled at the prisons. The pieces are designed by furniture plant manager Rusty Hyatt, who lives in Canton.

The list of seating options reads like a Maryland geography lesson: Allegany, Bel Air, Chesapeake, Crisfield, Ellicott, Frederick, Hampsted, Monkton, New Windsor, Potomac, Silver Spring and Woodbine.

"We're proud to be Maryland," Mr. Beeson said. "We're proud to be the prison industry for Maryland."

He said Maryland Corrections Enterprises employs about 1,600 inmates at nine prisons and in warehouse, delivery and photocopying jobs outside prison walls. They are paid a base rate of $1.10 to $2.60 a day.

The agency sold $42.8 million worth of goods last year, making it 10th among prison industries in sales in the United States.

Mr. Beeson said inmates who work in the plants tend to re-offend and return to prison at about half the rate of those who do not. Inmates must have a high school diploma or GED to work for the agency, which can help with their schooling.

Private furniture makers are not as keen on prison industries. The Independent Office Products and Furniture Dealers Association, based in Arlington, supports a bill passed in September by the U.S. House that would require Federal Prison Industries Inc. to compete on a more even footing with the private sector for federal contracts.

A 2004 law ended its monopoly on supplying office furniture and other items to federal agencies, but left it with some advantages, said Michael Ochs, the trade group's director of government affairs.

He said the group has concentrated on the federal, not the state level. But Mr. Ochs said state prison industries -- and every state has such an agency -- also cut into private industry sales.

Maryland law requires state agencies to buy from Maryland Correctional Enterprises any goods or services it can provide at prices at or below the prevailing average market price.

Mr. Beeson said Maryland Correctional Enterprises tries to limit its negative economic impact on the private sector by producing things not made by Maryland companies.

"Every year we study it, and for the whole state of Maryland, we constitute less than 3 percent of anyone's business in any one category," he said.