By AMBER DILLEY
GLASGOW — The Barren County Fiscal Court approved Tuesday an agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, Kentucky Department of Corrections and the Barren County Correction Center for a work program.
The program will allow state inmates at the Barren County jail to learn skills.
“What this does is provide work experience for inmates, primarily in the areas of equipment maintenance, operations, repairs with the KYTC equipment and road maintenance,” said County Judge-Executive Davie Greer. “The transportation department is going to pay a deputy to bring these inmates to the department and go to pick up trash from the state highways. They’re paying the deputy’s salary and all the benefits.”
Magistrate Tommy Mat-thews questioned if the jail would be able to meet the requirement of giving five to 10 inmates daily for the program.
“I wonder about the crew size,” he said. “We may not have enough people to go out and do this along with the other work we have.”
Deputy Matt Mutter said he didn’t think it would be an issue.
“We’re never at a loss for inmates on the work force,” he said. “This is completely different than the ones that go out now. We’ll pick the inmates from what we have and if the crew is doing a good job, we’ll leave them out there. Of course, once someone does their time, we’ll replace them, but I don’t think we’ll have a problem finding that many inmates to go out every day.”
