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Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux says the county jail’s farm has saved taxpayers over $1 million for the last three decades.
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A Central California sheriff’s office is providing a valuable service to inmates while saving county taxpayers millions each year.
Nestled in the heart of the Golden State is Tulare County, a leader in agriculture and a pioneer in jail reform with the creation of a county-owned farm providing meals to inmates housed at the Tulare County Jail for the last three decades.
“The central San Joaquin Valley is known for its agricultural produce and the ability to grow just about anything here,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told Fox News Digital. “One of the things that we wanted to do starting a few years back is offset the cost of what it means to feed inmates each and every day.”
Boudreaux said that on the high end there can be up to 2,200 inmates at the jail who are fed three times a day, so years ago, the county began using inmates to farm their own food that they are served daily.
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A Central California county jail is helping inmates rehabilitate back into society and saving taxpayers over $1 million. (Tulare County Sheriff’s Office)
“They created farmland with cattle, hogs and the ability to grow. And it’s really become the circle of life out there.”
Boudreaux added that they even have chickens and harvest their own eggs.
“We grow our own alfalfa. Now that alfalfa that we harvest on 1,100 acres, that feeds our cattle. We have anywhere between [300] and 400 head, plus we have calves that drop. And what I mean by that, calves are born, and we use those calves and really feed them into adults for the ability to butcher,” Boudreaux explained.
In addition, Boudreaux said all the leftover food from the day that inmates don’t eat gets turned into “slop” to feed the hogs.
“It’s just a big circle of life.”
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Boudreaux said what makes the project even more unique is that they are one of the only sheriff’s departments in California that has something of this caliber for inmates.
“For one, a lot of sheriffs don’t have the agricultural space to do so. Some sheriffs are either too small or too big. We’re just kind of – we’re in the middle of the central San Joaquin Valley, and we’re just right,” Boudreaux said.
“Other sheriffs have gotten rid of farming operations because of Proposition 47. They don’t have a workforce anymore that meets the misdemeanor or low offender status to be able to operate some of the farming operations,” he explained. “We have changed some of our criteria, allowing certain inmates to come out and work on the farm, which has allowed us to keep it up and operating.”
Boudreaux said the department has no plans to ever get rid of the program, but he noted that when he became sheriff in 2014, there were some struggles and the farm was nearly shut down.
“Fortunately, we weathered through the hard times of COVID, which kept people from being in facilities, so our operation was really hurting for a while, but we made it through that, and we’re saving the taxpayer, and that’s important,” Boudreaux said.
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The Tulare County Sheriff’s Farm feeds inmates, saving $1 million a year. (Tulare County Sheriff’s Office)
“I’m fiscally responsible for the money that comes in here. And we save anywhere between $1.2 and $1.6 million to the taxpayer each year.”
The farm not only saves millions in tax dollars, it also gives inmates the opportunity to turn their lives around and be better equipped after their release, the sheriff said.
“One of the focuses is that we identify those inmates that would be eligible for rehabilitation and work programs, and we place them into our farming operation where they learn animal care, they learn harvesting, they learn food-to-table from farm-to-table type operations. We grow broccoli, we grow cabbage, and they actually harvest this stuff,” Boudreaux said.
He added that they even provide a certification program in which inmates are able to go in and learn how to be certified butchers.
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“We have USDA-certified staff that teach and certify inmates so that when they go back out into the field, they can go into the workforce as butchers. They can go into grocery stores, who are always looking for butchers,” he said.
“And with the central San Joaquin Valley being a large agricultural-producing environment, what better way than to train these inmates to actually hop into the workforce on day 1 of release, being ready to understand the farming operation or the animal care operation or a butchering service.”
Boudreaux said their hope in providing these resources is that the inmates won’t return.
“We’d like to reduce our recidivism, and this is one of the ways in which we can really work to make that happen.”
Stepheny Price is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. She covers topics including missing persons, homicides, national crime cases, illegal immigration, and more. Story tips and ideas can be sent to stepheny.price@fox.com
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