At Tuesday’s regular meeting of the Jasper County Board of Supervisors, Terry Mapes of the Newton Correctional Facility informed the supervisors the prison was entering into a partnership with Trinity Towers via Iowa Prison Industries to provide workers for hard-to-fill openings.

“The law requires that we notify you. There is no action you need to take today,” Mapes said. “These will be minimum security prisoners ... and when they are released, they will leave incarceration with job skills that will help them down the road.”

Dan Clark of IPI said the state’s work release program is available only to employers who have demonstrated an inability to fill the jobs through normal advertising and with assistance from Iowa Workforce Development. A second provision of state law requires the prisoners be paid as though they were regular employees.