BOURNE – From Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office: Five Barnstable County Sheriff’s inmates are busy during this year’s winter break at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, but they aren’t hitting the books. Instead, they come bearing brushes and rollers, the better to brighten up dormitory walls thirsty for a new coat of paint.
“It’s good for them,” says academy building superintendent Mark Gonsalves, referring to productive time spent outside the confines of a jail cell. “And it’s good for us because we’re short staffed. This enables my workers to turn-to on other maintenance tasks, the kind we need to squeeze into that winter break when most students are off campus.”
The job has become a perennial inside project, good during weather frequently too cold for outside work. Inmate crews have been tackling it probably ten years straight, says Gonsalves, and the cycle is endless. “The painting ends,” says the building superintendent, “and it’s time to start over again.”
Gonsalves says he’s “never been stuck with a bad [inmate] job. Never.”
