NEW YORK (AP) | Each morning, and again in the afternoon, the blades of three bread-slicing machines are counted carefully. Only then does the bakery let workers go home — to their jail cells on Rikers Island.
Twenty inmates of one of the nation’s largest jail complexes are part of a team that bakes 36,000 loaves of bread a week to feed the city’s entire population behind bars — about 13,000 people. Employees in orange-and-white-striped jumpsuits and surgical caps earn $31 a week churning out whole wheat bread. There’s not an apron in sight
The prison bakers say they are learning skills that may keep them gainfully employed once they get out.
“I’m learning teamwork,” said prisoner Nikos Alexis, 24, who, according to correction records, is serving a four-month sentence for possession of a forged instrument.
It’s a privilege to get this work assignment; only inmates already sentenced to one year or less in jail are considered. Most of the other Rikers residents are awaiting trial on charges including murder.
The bakers behind bars get up before dawn and climb into a van for the ride to the other side of the 413-acre island in the East River between Queens and the Bronx.
Passing a double row of razor-wire-topped fences, they enter the mammoth, single-story bakery around 6 a.m., guarded by correction officers with a captain and a deputy warden.
By the loading dock, a sign in the glass window of a supervisor’s office reads: “FAKE & BAKE,” a small try at making people smile in this grim community.
More than culinary discipline is needed in this kitchen — part of a jail system where arguments between inmates or with guards can erupt in a flash, resulting in stabbings and slashings. In December, a Rikers correction officer had part of his thumb bitten off by an inmate.
So far, the bakery itself remains violence-free.
But it’s a dynamic, noisy place. Dangers include fast-moving industrial machinery tagged with hands-off warning signs and blinking yellow lights.
The baking process starts in giant metal tubs where 1,600 pounds of dough is mixed for each batch — half white flour and half the darker one — and hoisted with a lift into a machine that divides it into balls that are shaped and fed into corn oiled pans.
The finished bread is stored in a walk-in refrigerator with the words “Fort Knox” whimsically chiseled into its steel door.
The soothing smell of warm, freshly baked bread drifts across the 11,000-square-foot space, a labyrinth of white-coated metal machines mixing, shaping, baking, slicing and packing the loaves.
The men take turns at various stations, from mixing the flours in the tubs - “an awesome kind of combination,” said Alexis — to working the ovens.
The bakery’s products are not for sale to the public, even though prisoners agree it’s tasty enough to succeed outside the island.
“I would definitely give it a thumbs up and say it’s better than the bread I buy at the store,” said inmate Taiwan Taylor, 32, who’s serving an eight-month sentence for criminal trespass.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.