On March 21, the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District and Massachusetts Correctional Industries (MassCor) inked a contract that set up prisoners at MCI-Norfolk to reupholster the 1,105 badly worn auditorium seats at Amherst Regional High and Middle Schools, between April and June of this year, to the tune of $101,800.

The auditorium seats needed to be repaired, the district budget was limited, and using prison labor cut costs.

(For more on this investigative story by a high school newspaper, read this overview from The Marshall Project.)