Arkansas City ? A new company that opened its plant here Wednesday will be hiring minimum-security inmates for part of its work force.

The Northern Contours plant produces kitchen cabinet components and furniture components and will eventually have 60 to 75 employees, company officials said.

Floor workers will be hired from among minimum-security inmates who live at the Winfield Correctional Facility. Supervisors and office personnel will be hired from the community at large, company officials said.

Northern Contours, which is based in Minnesota, has other plants in that state and in Kentucky.

The company picked Kansas for another plant as part of an expansion, said Jim Moe, chief financial officer. He said it was the company’s first experience using inmate labor.

“We spent a lot of time talking with people who have worked with inmate labor throughout the state,” he said.

Tom Vohs, deputy director of Kansas Correctional Industries, a part of the state Department of Corrections, said labor programs for minimum-security inmates have worked well in various Kansas communities, including Leavenworth, Lansing, Topeka, and Salina.

The program is designed for those inmates close to returning to society, generally within two years of finishing their terms, who are considered low risk, he said.

Plant manager Mickey Roark, a Winfield native, said he has been undergoing a security training program for supervisors of inmate labor. He will pick up the inmates employed by the company from the Winfield facility each morning and return them each night.

“Every (plant) supervisor attends classes on handling inmates,” he said. “We pick them up. I have lunch with them, and I personally take them back to the Winfield facility.”

Every 15 minutes a check is made of all employees. “But really, every minute we know where everybody is, because our process is so driven by flow,” Roark said.