Clocking in: Some Oklahoma prisoners are plying a trade behind bars

HOMINY — The men making beans and cornbread waited for the men making state license plates.

“Don't forget the tip,” one of them said, ladling applesauce onto a tray while other men milled around the lunch line.

He wouldn't get one, but just a dollar would double the two quarters an hour he hustles for. Even here, in a workplace surrounded by razor wire and steel reminders of a life sentence, a man can take pride in his work.

The men are inmates at Dick Conner Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in northeastern Oklahoma. Each day, patrons dressed in similar prison garb pass under a banner that reads “The Best Work Here” and file into a machine shop that buzzes like a small factory on the outside.