The Central Prison Service Board and the State Forestry have signed a contract which envisages prisoners collecting garbage in Polish forests.
“Apart from cleaning garbage prisoners will also help prevent forest fires,” says Director of the State Forestry Marian Pigan.
Poland's State Forestry spends 20 million zloty (almost 5 million euro) annually on cleaning forests from all sorts of garbage, including tyres, bottles and litter. “Thanks to the prisoners we will be able to save some money and create bicycle paths, for example,” adds Pigan.
Director of the Prison Service Kajetan Dubiel is not afraid that prisoners will escape while cleaning the forest. “Poland has the lowest escape rate in Europe. Only 0.2 percent of prisoners who are granted leave do not come back. It’s not much considering that we issue 180,000 such passes a year,” says Dubiel.
Currently, there are 82,000 prisoners in Poland. Only 33 percent of inmates work, of which 10 percent work without payment. Recently, 5,000 prisoners helped reinforce embankments, repair damaged houses and pump out water from houses in the flood-affected areas. (mg/jb)
Source: IAR
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