CAMDEN – Letting inmate laborers take a swim after a long day at work has landed the work-release program in hot water.

For more than 20 years, park manager Bill Elliot has used minimum-security prisoners for work around Peaks-Kenny State Park on Sebec Lake and, more recently, at Camden Hills State Park.

Elliot estimates he has supervised 8,000 hours of prison labor at the parks without a problem. At Camden Hills, skilled carpenters and electricians from the Maine State Prison’s minimum-security unit have provided the equivalent of $66,000 in work over the last year.

But a crew of four working at the park has been suspended, and the program put in jeopardy by Elliot’s decision to let the four inmates swim in Lake Chickawaukie in Rockland.

On the afternoon of July 21, Elliot and a sergeant from the prison were driving the inmates back to the Warren lockup when they stopped along Route 17 to let the inmates have a quick swim.

“It was an 80-degree day,” Elliot said, “and the guys were on the roof,” working on a picnic pavilion at the park for about 10 hours.

The swim was brief, but it meant the inmates mingled with the general public.

“I don’t think they were out there 10 minutes,” he said, but apparently a prison employee later complained about the recreational break.

Warden Jeffrey Merrill was on vacation, but a deputy warden suspended the crew from further work outside the prison. Merrill, contacted Thursday evening, said that decision was the right one, but that he would review the matter when he returned to work Monday.

“It was a good-hearted gesture on Bill’s part,” Merrill said, but the swim was “a direct violation of our restitution program.”

The work completed at the park has been “fantastic,” the

warden said, “but there are rules. They’re not supposed to be out.”

Elliot said the rules were not clear, and that he would never have let the prisoners swim if he knew it was prohibited. He has let prisoners take short swim breaks at the park in the past, but promised never to allow it again.

Merrill said the public wasn’t at risk because of the swim, but the incident could prove to be a public relations problem for the restitution program, which allows minimum-security prisoners nearing release to work outside the prison.

Elliot was distressed Thursday, worried that the long-running program might end.

“I’m still negotiating, trying to get the crew – the same four fellows – reinstated,” he said. Elliot hopes to meet with Merrill next week.

“We have over $1,000 of training invested in that crew,” he said.