Economy
Why So Many Jails Are Embracing Aquaponics
Working with the technology provides job skills for inmates, but there’s more to it than that.
Dressed in traffic-cone orange, a similar shade to the fish under their care, inmates at the San Francisco County Jail set about their weekly duties: checking for pests, pH levels and the overall welfare of the jail’s pilot aquaponics program, the first of its kind in the state.
With guidance from their instructor, who has been schooling them on everything from plant biology to economics, the inmates check on the roughly 80 goldfish swimming in a 400-gallon blue water tank, and the beds growing jalapeños, berries, basil, rosemary and other plants.