April 26, 2010 - The Boston Globe - By Stan Grossfeld
PLYMOUTH — It’s 7:30 a.m. and inmate Tim Butler is in a barn shoveling horse excrement — and loving every minute of it.
“Oh boy, I’ll take this any day,’’ he says, smiling broadly at the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Farm where prisoners from the Plymouth County Correctional Facility care for retired Suffolk Downs thoroughbreds.
“I’ll shovel against the tide seven days a week. It sure beats being in jail.’’
He’s part of an aptly named program called “Second Chances’’ that is sponsored by the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, the Fields Family Foundation, and Suffolk Downs. It’s a win-win situation. Inmates get out of jail during the day to care for the horses and learn a vocation. The horses get pampered in retirement on a 90-acre farm. The program started last November when four retired Suffolk racehorses were brought into an old barn renovated by inmates.
