Basically, in these facilities, inmates are allowed to leave to look for jobs, go to work, and generally pretend to be people again for a while. The idea is to avoid the all-too-common scenario where a former inmate gets released, can't find a job, and walks straight back into the meth lab. But there were a lot of hoops companies had to jump through to hire Carla's people.

"They had to sign contracts with the state submitting to searches (if called for), the supervisors had to agree to cooperate with DOC and DEA (the supervisor at a construction site ended up being prosecuted for harboring a felon and assisting in an escape attempt after lying to us about an inmate's whereabouts), and it was a pain in the ass in general," Carla says. "Hardee's employed three of our guys but they couldn't work the same shifts, they couldn't take their breaks at the same time, [and] Hardee's wasn't allowed to hire any other felons."

Michael Rivera

Most fast food managers don't want to deal with a game of musical cons. So the government appeals to their greed and offers companies tax incentives to hire inmates.

"The program specifics may vary but trust me, most people don't realize that their cook at Red Lobster is leaving his shift at the end of the night to be patted down, UA'd, and locked in his cell for bed. The next day, he'll be released with his allowance to go to a movie or the library and he'll be searched, breathalyzed and sent to mess hall for lunch before his next shift."

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Oh, but that's not all free:

"Our financial counselor received their paychecks and disbursed the money to the facility (it cost about $350/month to go through the program for each inmate so 'rent' was paid first), child support, probation/parole, victims restitution, and court costs," Carla says. "IF there was anything left over, she would call a meeting with management and counselors and they would discuss a possible allowance for the inmate."

In other words, if the government wasn't too put out by you, you could maybe get a Snickers*.

Hans/Pixabay

That prime location was necessary because "very few of these people had any kind of personal transportation and [our city] doesn't really have a bus system, so they needed to be in an area where they could find jobs they could walk to," Carla says.

It should be noted that they were, in fact, "allowed to have cars if they could afford them." That was occasionally a problem. See, there's a reason prisons are typically in the middle of nowhere, and inmates aren't issued go-karts: There were escapes, just ... constantly.

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"A young psychopath broke into the accountant's office, stole the contact sheet with all our home addresses on it, and then disappeared," Carla says. "My supervisor drove straight out to my place because I lived alone and told me 'If he comes into your yard just shoot him. I'll be right there.' I don't know if he ever came to my place because I spent that week at my supervisor's house with his family."

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They took measures to mitigate the risk to public safety by making sure "there were no schools or residential neighborhoods nearby so sex offenders could live there" and asking local businesses that could prove to be a problem (mostly bars) not to serve the inmates. Still ...

"One of our worst pedophiles [was caught] in the grocery store two blocks from my house with two little boys [who] fit his victim profile exactly."

You're right to be skeeved out. If anything, slap on a few more skeeve-pelts.

Another popular way to end up at Carla's facility was to "serve more than 10 years in a state correctional facility and apply or be recommended to transition and finish your sentence early," Carla told us. That includes legitimate murderers and psychopaths, who were absolutely not ready to re-enter society.

"When there's a psychopathic rapist on the second floor and his file says 'episodes triggered by ponytail hairstyle,' don't forget to bun your hair before bed check because he's a fast motherfucker," Carla says. "Some of them tried to kill me, [including a] neo-Nazi who constantly threatened to kill me until he knocked up a black stripper with twins and I helped her sign up for public assistance."

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But not even he was as memorable as the honest-to-God axe-murderer.

"[He] was a bit of a mystery to me," Carla says. "I know he'd been in prison for murdering his best friend and girlfriend in 1979. He was young at the time, drunk and high. I'm not sure if he was initially sentenced 25 to life with a chance at parole or if an appeal got him a chance at parole, but he was eventually given a chance to go to our facility to get a chance at an outside life. His boss spoke very highly of him and the only real problems we had with him was a snap temper. He would very quickly become defensive and threatening with little or no provocation."

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Incidentally, that guy totally escaped. Go-karts! Just a bad idea. (No, an axe-wielding maniac didn't actually giggle away in a funny-car. That was a metaphor; we'll get into this whole incident later.)

Yep. Escaping axe murderers and chronic masturbators faced pretty much identical penalties. Obviously this did not stop them from masturbating:

"I would walk into a room where one guy was reading a book, one guy was listening to music, the guy from the wrong room would just be sitting on a bed and another guy would just be standing there stroking his pole, facing the door and grinning at me, all of them would just be taking in my reaction."

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When opportunities do present themselves, they often backfired.

"Only one of our inmates was ever enrolled in college courses," Carla says. "He was a con man and had scammed dozens of old people out of millions of dollars since he was in high school. He was polite, well-spoken, and well-mannered, and gave us zero trouble. When the school called to tell us he'd been caught in the computer lab communicating with unauthorized people online, we assumed he had a girlfriend (they ALL had girlfriends or boyfriends), but we looked into it. He was scamming old ladies out of their retirement money, telling them sob stories and having them 'help' him with college after his family had passed away. They'd wire him money to the Western Union on campus, he'd pick it up, I'm sure it all seemed legit. But he was going to school for free as part of an educational program to help convicted felons, so he had no school expenses and never did account for the money. The school later determined that he was also running a successful side business selling papers and test answers. [He] was definitely a business-minded man."

Susan Sterner

If you're sensing a pattern here, you're not alone.

In the end, "when they found him, he was at the same bar he used to hang out in in his tiny hometown. He didn't know anyone and he had nowhere else to go. He didn't have any idea how to live a life outside so he just waited for them to take him back."

And even for a model inmate, old habits can die hard: "One man who had worked in the prison kitchen before coming to our program [also] worked in the restaurant at Red Lobster, and was accepted as an apprentice under a chef at a local convention center," Carla says. "He really loved his work and was actually a very good chef. He went on to run the kitchen at a historic hotel -- until he was caught with heroin in a flophouse."

Psychonaught/Wiki Commons

"I heard they sent him back to prison for it, but that was after I quit."

We know this all sounds intensely disheartening. But there's good news: These programs can work! Just not without proper funding and implementation. Which is the bad news, since literally everything we just talked about here implies we have neither.

For more insider perspectives, check out 6 Brutal Things You Experience As An Ex-Convict and 6 Ugly Things I Learned About American Prisons (As A Guard).

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