Hard Time and Hemlines : Behind Bars for Rape and Murder, Convicts Vie for the Chance to Cut and Sew for Sportswear Labels

Rich Dyer, a onetime nuclear foreman for the Department of Defense, tried to bury his former wife alive after she was granted custody of the couple’s two children. He’s serving a life sentence at the state prison here.

Angelo Pleasant, a former wrestler, shot and killed two of his coaches when he caught them arguing over a woman. He’s serving two life sentences.

But Dyer and Pleasant do more than serve time. The men have new careers of sorts: They operate sewing machines at this maximum-security prison 60 miles north of Seattle. Pleasant sews pockets on fleece outerwear and Dyer sews labels for Redwood Outdoors, an independent Washington contractor.

Since 1983, the program--among the first in the United States--has been training inmates to construct everything from ski parkas to swimwear, products sold in department and specialty stores.

“This program is No. 1,” says Pleasant, a burly weightlifter. “Guys would break their necks to be in this program.”

Pleasant, who came here 16 years ago when he was 21, talks like a student of Seventh Avenue. He mentions Redwood clothing’s “quality standards”--and likes to compare the workmanship in samples from other countries.

Dyer, a shop foreman, also lauds the program. The difference between Redwood and other prison jobs is that it’s more than just busy work like making license plates; he learns a skill.

“This job has to be able to perform as a business on the street,” he says. “And (apparel) is business on the street.”

There is a sense of family in the Redwood program--even if that family is, at times, dysfunctional. And, by all accounts, Bessie Thompson is the matriarch.

Thompson, vice president of Redwood, says she has eyes in the back of her head, ready to pounce on any wrongdoing.

“Everyone thinks I’m crazy for working here, but many of these guys are young and are in here because they fell into the wrong crowd,” says Thompson, a former production manager for Jansport. “They haven’t had a positive role model until now.”

She and three other women oversee the Redwood employees, who are doing time for such crimes as rape, aggravated assault and murder.

“Bessie can be tough, but she’s fair,” says Grady Mitchell, a former mechanic who has served eight years of a life sentence for the stabbing death of “a former acquaintance.” After working in the prison kitchen and laundry, he was admitted into Redwood four years ago. Thompson says Mitchell is one of her best employees.

“When I first got the job, some of the guys would call me Bessie’s boy,” says the muscle-bound Mitchell as he maneuvers a split-needle sewing machine around the pocket of a fleece pullover. “Even my two sons thought I was a (wimp) for working a sewing machine. Now my sons are growing up to be more discriminating customers. When they go into a store for clothes, they always look at the construction.”

Mitchell beams as he shows off a picture taped to his machine of his wife and children. His wife, a seamstress, wears a red dress manufactured at Monroe.

Most of the prisoners at the Washington State Reformatory (pop. 800) are high school dropouts with few or no skills. They mostly spend their time doing menial tasks in the laundry, kitchen or print shop, earning from 8 to 75 cents an hour. Most of them aspire to work for Redwood, which is the highest-paying job in the prison and has a waiting list of up to four years.

But the entry requirements are tough. Because of limited space, low turnover and lack of equipment, Redwood can accommodate only 40 inmates. Prisoners who are on Death Row, who exhibit behavioral problems or who suffer from mental illness are disqualified. Periodic urine analysis also weeds out drug users. Many inmates are not even considered for the program until they have been at the prison for several years and show a willingness to cooperate.

Those who meet the requirements fill out applications, which eventually go to Harry Osborne, instructor and coordinator of clothing and textiles at nearby Edmonton Community College. Osborne runs an 11-week basic sewing class at the prison; inmates are taught to make patterns, cut fabric and operate specialized sewing machines.

Upon graduation, the final training step is to work for Bessie Thompson. Some inmates sew side seams on pants and pullover sweat shirts, others add pockets and sleeves, sort products by size and box and ship finished products.

In Seattle--the nation’s third largest apparel center after New York and Los Angeles--Redwood executives say the relatively small Monroe facility does a sizable business.

According to Thompson, who has worked for Redwood since its inception, the facility produced more than 50,000 garments in 1990 for such labels as Union Bay, Cutter & Buck, Eddie Bauer and Helly Hansen. These companies praise Redwood’s high quality standards.

“If they weren’t competitive, there’s no company so charitable they would want to produce in a prison,” says Joey Rodolfo, vice president of design at Seattle-based Cutter & Buck, which has had everything from swimwear to lightweight jackets manufactured at Monroe.

Still, the going can be tough, says Rick Swanson, who manages the Redwood program for his father, Adrian Swanson, a Chicago-based investor.

“We’re up against two stereotypes,” says Swanson. “One, is that prisoner-made goods are inferior, and that’s clearly not the case at Redwood.

“The other stereotype is this moral issue which asks, ‘Do I want to purchase a garment made by prison labor and handled by a murderer and, in effect, contribute to someone who may not deserve it?’ The counter to that second stereotype is if you believe rehabilitation is possible and that prisons are not just places to cage people and sequester them from society, then you have to support the learning process.

“Redwood gives prisoners a sense of worth beyond money,” adds Swanson. “We’re telling them that their work is of value. And that’s important to someone who felt the only way to gain worth in the past was to take it.”

But if you listen to labor leaders and some legislators, programs like Redwood may very well lead to the exploitation of inmates. What’s more, cheap prison labor will create unfair competition, they say, and ultimately take jobs from law-abiding citizens.

In California, voters last November approved a proposition allowing prisons and county jails to contract with outside businesses. Just before the vote, John F. Henning, head of the California Labor Federation, warned that “every job they (prisoners) take means that many more workers added to California’s increasing unemployment total.”

Noreen Blonien, assistant director of Joint Venture, which oversees the state’s new prison labor programs, insists that inmates cannot directly compete with existing businesses; if a clothing manufacturer opens shop in a California prison, it will be a new venture or one that previously operated in another country.

Blonien and other prison officials also dismiss arguments that inmates will get rich. Prisoners in the Redwood program receive the state minimum hourly wage of $4.25, but only about $1.10 goes into their pockets. The rest goes to various sources, including victim restitution.

Like most of the prisoners in Redwood, Pleasant is optimistic that he will one day be paroled (as are nearly 98% of Washington’s prisoners). And he says he sees Redwood as an opportunity to change his future.

“This was the first thing to come around that a person could say, ‘If I get involved, if I get an opportunity, what will it do for me?’ ” Pleasant says. “Up until then I was just killing time . . . because that’s basically what a lot of these jobs are, trying to mark time, let the year go by and . . . boom. This program has allowed a lot of us guys a chance to give something back, not just to the families who have suffered as a result of what we’ve done, but to our own families as well. This program has given me patience.”

According to Thompson, what the program offers inmates is hope. She says 25% of Redwood employees have already been paroled and have yet to return. “I ran into a former inmate at a rug store recently,” she says. “We had a nice chat, he told me he was doing well and he went on his way. That’s what this program is about.”