Lock step: Montana Prisoners provide labor for custom boot manufacturer – Wayne Bowman’s Wilson Boots of Livingston, Montana

Straight lines are the toughest to sew.

Don’t think the irony is lost on seven convicted felons who make cowboy boots at the Montana State Prison.

Nor are others: The men walk daily, gladly, from behind steel bars to fashion leather into Wayne Bowman’s Wilson Boots http://www.wilsonboots.com/ , hard-toed symbols of the independent cowboy life.

They don’t go back without an armed escort.

They’re paid minimum wage, and reap roughly 20 percent of it after taxes, victim compensation, family and child support, and room and board. Half of that 20 percent goes into a mandatory savings account for their post-incarceration lives.

Yet theirs are among the more coveted jobs behind prison fences. The stack of applications is an inch thick.

By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2008/05/18/territory/ter69.txt