New Mexico will expand a five-- year-old program that trains minimum-security inmates to become firefighters.

After its most successful summer of operations, the Corrections Department said the Inmate Work Camp would increase participation by about 50 percent.

The camp usually trains about 40 inmates to serve with federal, state and local firefighters when wildfires break out.

The training also includes forest fire prevention methods, such as clearing brush and thinning trees.

After a heavy season of wildfires and reviewing the low recidivism rate of ex-offenders that enrolled, the department will add another 20 inmates to the program for 2003.

Last summer inmate crews have worked 12 fires, including the Ponil Complex Fire, which devoured nearly 100,000 acres of northern New Mexico land last month.

The New Mexico Forestry Division started the Inmate Work Camp five years ago with $1.2 million in state startup money and has reported no escapes or major problems.

Besides training firefighters, the state cuts its costs. New Mexico pays a typical 20-member crew $5,000 for each day of its services. Twenty-four inmates from the New Mexico prison system cost $500.

That money means the Inmate Work Camp is self-supporting. The program operates on an annual $120,000 budget. None of that money goes directly to the inmates. Each job the crews do is a contract with the Corrections Department, which places the money in each inmate's personal account.

For security reasons, inmate crews wear bright orange fire-- retardant coveralls. Other crews that wear yellow or green coveralls.

Inmates receive an average of 280 hours of professional training that allows them to qualify near the top tier of professional firefighters.

To join the prison fire crew, inmates must earn their way to the prison system's honor farm in Los Lunas. Then, after a stringent application process, the few who make it through the rigorous training exercises are prepared not just to fight fires but to work as a team.

A big part of the prison system is status. At the honor farm, members of the Inmate Work Camp are in the elite, earning $1 to $2.50 an hour while fighting a fire. Other workers at the honor farm earn about 25 cents.

While inmate crews have long been used in the Pacific Northwest, states in the Southwest are just beginning to employ them.