The sheriff’s department of Cook County, Ill., runs a program in which inmates are trained in demolition and have in three years torn down 110 blighted houses. Sheriff Tom Dart said in an interview that the project took time, in part, because of safety measures like asbestos removal, which is carried out by private contractors. “We have to do this thing right because otherwise it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.

As it came together in the spring of 2015, the plan in Pine Bluff was to move forward with 600 demolitions. Giving the funding constraints, the project would have little more than two years and $830,000 to get this done, or as much of it as possible. Even with low-cost labor, it was a very tight squeeze.

Officials with Pine Bluff and Mulligan Road approached the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality looking for ways to bring down expenses, particularly the high cost of required asbestos remediation.

They began looking at a 2008 state guideline that granted some leeway for isolated demolitions of abandoned buildings. At the time of its adoption, state and federal memos warned explicitly against carrying out large projects “in a piecemeal fashion” just to qualify. But this time, officials agreed that a 600-house project could fit, if the demolitions were scattered strategically around the city.

No asbestos surveys would be done and no asbestos removed; the presence of asbestos in the buildings would simply be presumed. As a “show of good faith,” the city agreed to send a fire truck around to wet the debris and keep down the dust.

Last fall, about 30 inmates who had agreed to be the first participants in the program began arriving at a secured complex of brick duplexes on the edge of the city. For a few hours over two or three days, they watched safety videos while an instructor, according to those interviewed, nodded off to sleep in the back. The videos spent “just a few minutes” on demolition procedures, said one participant; other videos concerned safety measures on factory floors or in steel working. No certification was given.