ARKANSAS CITY, AR - A new industry in Arkansas City that is hiring minimum-security inmates from the Kansas Correctional system opened its plant today to community leaders.

The Northern Contours plant is located just east of the Creekstone Farms Premium Beef facility. It produces kitchen cabinet components and furniture components and will eventually have 60 to 75 employees, company officials said at a reception, ribbon-cutting and plant tour this morning.

Floor workers will be hired from among minimum-security inmates who live at the Winfield Correctional Facility. Supervisors and office personnel will be hired from the community at large, company officials said.

"We are not under production yet," said Ken Pharr, president and chief operating officer of Northern Contours, which is based in Minnesota. The company has plants in that state and in Kentucky.

Northern Contours picked Kansas for another plant as part of a company expansion, said Jim Moe, chief financial officer. "We selected Kansas because that allows us to serve our current customers in Kansas and Texas.

"This is the company's first experience using inmate labor, Moe said. "We spent a lot of time talking with people who have worked with inmate labor throughout the state; they have had 25 years' experience."

The program is designed for those inmates close to returning to society, generally within two years of finishing their terms, who are considered low risk to others and to themselves, he said.

Plant manager Mickey Roark, a Winfield native, said he is undergoing a security training program for supervisors of inmate labor. He will pick up the inmates employed by the company from the Winfield facility each morning and return them each night.

"Every (plant) supervisor attends classes on handling inmates," he said. "We pick them up. I have lunch with them, and I personally take them back to the Winfield facility."

Every 15 minutes during the work day a check is made of all employees. "But really, every minute we know where everybody is, because our process is so driven by flow," Roark said.

Tom Vohs, deputy director of Kansas Correctional Industries, a part of the state Department of Corrections, said inmate labor programs for minimum-security inmates have worked well at various Kansas communities, including Leavenworth, Lansing, Topeka, and Salina.

"There have been no incidents with the inmates in the past six years I've worked in this position," he said.