Recruit Jailhouse Scientists?

I wonder if a jailhouse geologist would know anything about the jailhouse rock?

_{Everybody on the whole cell block was dancing to it.}

Birdman of Alcatraz.

For a parallel example in the world of letters, see Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman, about how convicted murderer James Minor helped in compiling citations for the Oxford English Dictionary.

Then again, maybe you could just pay someone who is unemployed to do it. It's called "having a job".

Imagine the ridicule when they seek a government grant to perform the work with paid workers.

Could it be possible that giving these people an opportunity to do something with real meaning while they are serving their time might inspire them to continue with this when they are returned to society; rather than returning them to the life that brought them to prison in the first place.

That's a dangerous idea. Maybe only if you let them work on scientific ideas for the betterment of society if your careful on what that is. But it's probably not wise.