Chihuahua:
I grew up in South Dakota. When I was in high school the governor (or whoever) made a huge investment in internet infrastructure. And guess who they got to do the work? They were all minimum-security inmates and were given a surprising amount of freedom to go about their business without supervision. The faculty just told us to ignore them. Maybe they figured there were enough grown-ups around.
After I graduated I got my first shitty menial job. One of the employees was an inmate on some kind of work program. Every day they let him out of jail and he hopped on a bicycle and came to work. Then at night he had to pedal himself back to jail.
I know this is getting off OP, but that was my experience with minimum security in South Dakota. Apparently they are lenient when it comes to trusting the well-behaved prisoners to go about with minimal supervision.
I work at one of the universities in SD and they are constantly bringing inmates to do work on campus. You just tend to ignore them. There usually is someone to watch them, but I don’t think he has a gun or anything.