Henry County inmates help feed community
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PARIS, Tenn. — The Henry County Sheriff’s Office is inviting hunters to donate the deer they kill for a good cause. The “Deputies for the Hungry” program created four years ago allows inmates to process donated deer to give back to people in the community. The Henry County Sheriff’s Office is asking the public to donate deer through December. “The more deer meat we get the better off we’ll be, the more we can give back to Henry County. We want to take as much as we can get, so if you’re out deer hunting go ahead and pull that trigger and bring it to us,” Henry County Sheriff Monte Belew said. The program allows for six inmates to process deer that is then packaged, frozen and given to area food banks and to those in need. The sheriff’s office will begin giving away the packaged meat in January. “We’ll have community giveaways here at the sheriff’s office and people are usually lined up out the gate to receive it,” Belew said. Sheriff Monte Belew said the program is a win-win for the inmates. “The inmates have a sense of giving something back to the community rather than just being incarcerated. They give something back by processing the deer meat,” Belew said. Sergeant Ricky Ford said most of the inmates in the program are serving time for drug charges, not violent offenses. “We have to kind of keep an eye on the knives, make sure all the knives are here and everything, but other than that we trust them pretty well,” Ford said. Sheriff Belew said the men have worked their way up to be trusted with the tools. “They’re good people that have just done something wrong. They’re incarcerated, they’re supervised by deputies,” Belew said. Inmate Andy Kent has been a part of the deer processing program for two years and said it’s nice to be trusted. “They see us out here working instead of doing bad things. We’re doing good things for the community,” Kent said. Last year Henry County was in the top five for deer harvesting in the state. Sheriff Belew said the processing center was built with fines paid by those on probation. Last year the sheriff’s office processed 94 deer. This year it hopes to process up to 125.
