These Pros Are Cons

North Carolina Correction Enterprise Print Plant/Central Duplicating

Raleigh, N.C.

Annual sales: $7 million

Full-time employees: 186

Jobs printed per year: 13,500

Robert Leon runs an extremely professional, profitable in-plant. Comprising a large offset operation and a separate duplicating facility, his in-plant generates $7 million in annual sales and employs 186 people.

But his operation is different from other in-plants in one key way: Nearly all of his employees are prison inmates.

Leon is director of printing at North Carolina Correction Enterprises. He oversees the offset print plant, located in Nashville, N.C., and a central duplicating center, in Raleigh. In its 60 years of existence, the in-plant has grown to become one of the country's largest.

Unlike many other prison in-plants, though, this one does not get by with ancient second-hand equipment. It has some of the latest, top-of-the-line gear, including two brand new Kodak DigiSource 9110 digital printers. In fact, between both operations, Leon says the in-plant has spent about $2 million on equipment over the past two to three years.

"We're receipt-supported, so we don't have any money appropriated to us from the legislature," Leon explains.

He even intends to expand. A new duplicating facility is planned for the winter of 2000, and Leon is trying to add a second shift in the print plant—a tough move in a prison, where inmates are on strict schedules. In the past five years, Leon says, the offset operation alone has grown from $2 million in annual sales to $4 million.

But how did a prison in-plant get to be so huge? Part of it, Leon explains, has to do with the great support he gets from the state.

"In this state, anything that we can do to put more inmates to work, most of the officials really want to see that happen," he explains. "They just think the more inmates working the better."

Additionally, Leon says, state officials like his in-plant because it saves taxpayers money by providing printing to tax-supported entities at a much lower price than outside vendors can offer. His customers include state government agencies, city and county governments, community colleges and state universities.

His shop's growth was also likely aided when the state closed its printing operation six years ago, bringing some new work his way. Plus, when the print plant was expanded five years ago, the shop gained the capacity to handle more work. That additional work is being solicited through the efforts of a salesperson who visits customers and drums up business. Leon is currently trying to add a similar salesperson to sell for central duplicating.

The print plant specializes in one- and two-color jobs, like business cards, books, forms and envelopes. Central duplicating specializes in quick-turnaround work and uses networked DocuTechs, plus the two new 110-ppm Kodak DigiSource 9110 printers.

One of the difficulties of running a prison in-plant is training. Since inmates can't be sent out to a vendor's training site, the in-plant's civilian staff goes out for training and then trains the operators, all of whom are inmates.

"Most inmates are very conscientious, believe it or not," Leon says. "The biggest difficulty is getting an inmate to understand why a customer needs the level of quality that they do, and then getting him to maintain that quality."

Leon says inmates can earn bonuses for the quality of their work.

Despite working closely with more than 100 convicted criminals, Leon says he has no fear when he walks the shop floor.

"We have discovered, if you conduct yourself in a professional manner and you expect the inmates to conduct themselves in a professional manner, you pretty much get compliance," he explains—but just in case, he adds, a correctional officer is always on site.

Though the private sector grumbles that prison in-plants like this are undercutting them by paying inmate employees very low wages (13¢ to 26¢ an hour), Leon says his operation is justified because it not only saves taxpayers money, but it keeps inmates busy.

"We're interested in running our organization like a business and showing a profit," he says, "but we're also interested in working inmates."

—by Bob Neubauer

Key Equipment

• One 20˝ Fuji imagesetter

• One Fuji scanner

• One two-color, 29˝ Heidelberg

• Two one-color, 40˝ Heidelbergs

• Two one-color, 36˝ Heidelbergs

• One one-color, 29˝ Heidelberg

• Two one-color, 20˝ Heidelberg GTOs

• Three two-color, 20˝ Heidelberg GTOs

• One Kluge letterpress