The News Journal of Wilmington reports that John Sigler, chairman of the Republican State Committee, has asked U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly to investigate the Sussex County prisoner program for possible civil rights violations. The state correction commissioner is already looking into it.
The program permitted employers to use inmates as day laborers. But the state correction department shut it down last month because the Sussex Work Release Center couldn't produce paperwork about the inmates who provided the labor.
Sigler says the lack of records is troubling, and he wants to know whether the inmates were properly treated and where the money that they earned went.
