Karlton is 28 years old. He has a 1-year-old baby girl, an ironworker’s union card, and has spent the last four months in state prison.

He was sent to Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in Bordentown on weapons offenses to serve his sentence. But even through a prison existence, he can count on one thing to make him happy: getting up for work each morning.

Karlton, who like most inmates did not want to give his last name, is part of a new program that has a handful of inmates repairing donated bicycles at a corrections department warehouse in Trenton. The fixed bikes are taken to a store in Ewing run by the Boys & Girls Club and sold to families in need for low prices.

At the warehouse off North Olden Avenue last week, Karlton showed some of the handiwork that grounds him with discipline and strength five days a week.

“It’s wonderful to come out and work,” he said. “It’s good to get away from the jail, and be normal. I come back here, I work, I help. It’s a blessing for me.”

When the program started, corrections officials estimated 40 bikes would be fixed per month.

Instead, the three-man crew churned out 40 repaired bikes a week. Since July, the inmates have fixed 300 bicycles, said Michael Ritter, education program specialist for corrections. The workers will take a $150 bike in need of repair, put the equivalent of $50 worth of labor into it, then sell it for $30, $20 or less in the shop, he said.

“The initiative has been a true win-win, because guys like Karlton are developing their self-esteem” Ritter said.

The benefits outside the corrections department are obvious, said Russ White, a bicycle store owner who came up with the exchange program five years ago and partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Trenton.

White estimates 9,000 bikes have been sold at low costs to area families who may not have the spare money to buy their children new bikes. It’s not just kids who take advantage of the program, as the clientele at the Bike Exchange in Ewing’s Capitol Plaza mall has shown.

“We sell a lot of bikes for low-income workers who use it for commuting,” said White, who owns a separate bike store in Bucks County, Pa.

A similar bike exchange will be coming soon to Newark, and a pop-up store is slated to open in downtown Trenton this month, just in time for the Christmas season.

The idea to put inmates on the program came early this year and started in July. The inmates chosen are minimum security and transported every day to the Trenton building that houses DEPTCOR, the state’s prison industries program.

“They take a lot of pride,” DEPTCOR Director John Muniz said of the inmates.

Though he was picked for the program due to a good degree of mechanical aptitude, last week Karlton was being guided by volunteer Wills Kinsley, a Trenton artist who frequently uses bicycles in his pieces.

“It’s a learning experience for me,” Karlton said. “I really don’t know too much about it, but I get plenty of help.”

They replaced cables and housing for bike pedals and put on a new brake lever.

“I’m having an issue with this,” Karlton said toKinsley, holding up the brake line between his thumb and forefinger.

“Some of these, you’ve got to pull out the plastic first,” Kinsley said.

Another volunteer, Alex Wallace, of New Hope, Pa., has been impressed with the inmates’ work ethic.

“I come here Monday morning, and three guys are (already) working,” he said. “They’re enthusiastic. And they know they’re making a contribution to kids.”

Getting to work alongside one another has been eye-opening for the volunteers as well as the inmates.

“It’s great,” said Jason Smith, associate teen director with Boys & Girls. “They’re not bad people. They’re real-life guys just like you and me. Some of these guys were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Karlton, who three years ago was caught with a gun in Mays Landing, Atlantic County, said he had been robbed and beaten up twice. He was carrying the gun because he didn’t want it to happen again.

“I think I made a mistake,” Karlton said. “I regret it.”

He tries to stay positive at the jail, his home for the next few months.

“I read my Bible, work out, keep my head up,” Karlton said.

Sometimes, when he’s riding the van to the warehouse, he said it can be easy to forget he’s an inmate. But the hope of the morning slides away quickly once it’s time to return to the prison in the afternoon.

“It always feels like that on the way back,” Karlton said. “I ain’t going home, I’m going to jail.”

He missed his daughter’s first birthday this month, but plans a big party when he gets back. He’s trying to get placed in a halfway house, where he can hold down a job outside prison and do what he wants to do — work.

“It’s one step from being home,” Karlton said.

The Bike Exchange is open in Capitol Plaza in Ewing from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Further information is available at bikeexchangenj.org, and volunteers may sign up via e-mail at info@bikeexchange.org.



Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.

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