Prison Prepared For Specialty Plates
Since November, inmates at Nebraska State Penitentiary’s Cornhusker State Industries have been using a digital printing process to make specialty covered-wagon license plates that will be issued starting next year.
Using equipment leased from 3M for $241,000 a year, the Digital License Plate system streamlines plate manufacturing and allows a computer graphic designer to create specialty plates in-house.
Nebraska legislators are considering a number of new license plate ideas, such as for child abuse prevention, firefighters, and to honor the military.
The new technology eliminates the need to manually stamp numbers on blank plates and paint on the numbers after they have been stamped.
The new plates are flat rather than having ridged letters and numbers, and are made of lightweight aluminum instead of the steel alloy currently used.
Cornhusker State Industries Administrator John McGovern states that fewer prison workers will be needed once prison industries make the transition to the new fabrication process.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Omaha World Herald (01/13/04) P. 1A; Reed, Leslie.