North Carolina Department of Correction news release

February 25, 1998

Nash Correctional Institution prisoners pick up highway litter

NASHVILLE - Minimum security inmates at Nash Correctional Institution are doing their part to keep Nash and Edgecombe counties clean and beautiful. Year-round, the inmates walk the counties’ highways - U.S. 64, U.S. 301 and Route 97 - filling up hundreds of orange bags with trash and debris.

Joseph Jefferys, an officer at Nash Correctional Institution, said the prison has been working closely with the "Keep America Beautiful" program in Rocky Mount. "The ‘Keep America Beautiful’ chapter sends us a list of areas where they have been getting complaints, and then we send out several crews to pick up the trash," he said.

The prison work crews are part of the Governor’s Community Work program. Under the program, a correctional officer supervises a squad of up to ten minimum security prisoners in short term, manual labor jobs for public agencies.

In addition to helping the "Keep America Beautiful" program, the inmates also pick up trash along U.S. 64 for the "Adopt-A-Highway" program. Nash Correctional Institution has adopted a two-mile stretch of the highway, and the inmates regularly pick up trash that has accumulated along the roadside.

"Under the ‘Adopt-A-Highway’ program we are supposed to clean up the area quarterly, but we do it monthly," Jefferys said. "We also keep up another section of U.S. 64 between Rocky Mount and Tarboro that has no volunteers."

Trash pickup is a never-ending job for the inmates at Nash Correctional Institution. Jefferys said anytime that the inmates are not working on other projects, they are picking up trash along the roadways.

"This is an on-going project. It never ends," he said.

-cjh-