The ultimate “win-win” proposition: Scientists get “research collaborators and inmates get a job that beats stamping out license plates”. Forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni is using prisoners to learn how best to cultivate the dwindling prairie plants in a National Science Foundation research project. Inmates at the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Washington, plant seeds and record observations on plant growth.
Nadkarni says that the inmates’ learning is equally valuable:

Everyone can be a scientist – everyone can relate to nature, everyone can contribute to the scientific enterprise, even those who are shut away from nature.

The project may model how other prisons can provide useful skills and learning opportunities to inmates while helping scientists find reliable (long term, in some cases) research collaborators.
SOURCE: National Science Foundation http://bit.ly/c8QP0 via The World Future Society