MACHIASPORT (AP) – Inmates at the Downeast Correctional Facility have sewn more than 15,000 pairs of bluejeans during the past four years, all of them worn by the 2,000 male inmates in Maine’s prison system.

Now, the garment shop at the Bucks Harbor prison has expanded beyond jeans and is making jean jackets that may someday find a market beyond the prison fences.

The jeans are produced under an arrangement with Oregon, which holds the trademark for prison-made jeans. The dozen or so garment shop workers stitch them together from kits purchased from Oregon.

Oregon’s prison factory was started in 1989 with a federal grant funded by drug money seizures. Today, Oregon’s Prison Blues brand is sold throughout the country, Japan and Europe.

Maine saves money by outfitting its inmates with jeans made from the pattern kits. It’s also a good deal for inmates selected for the coveted sewing jobs that pay up to $2.90 an hour.

“I’m honored to have this job,” said Jason Bridges of Portland, 27, who has four years to go on his sentence. “It’s probably the best job here.”

The shift to jeans for inmates in Maine’s six adult prisons came in 2001.

“They used to have everyone in orange and even in their own clothes,” said John Gilmore, who oversees garment production. “Then they decided that all men would dress in jeans at all times.”

Gilmore, a former upholsterer, was hired five years ago to teach his trade to inmates. He trained six men for six months to restitch sofas, then saw the potential to apply their new skills to sewing bluejeans -and later, jean jackets.

Working from their own in-house pattern, they have already made 4,000 jackets for Maine inmates, with an additional 2,000 on order.

Gilmore and Sandra Altmannsberger, the facility’s business director, would like to get the jeans jackets on the open market.

Altmannsberger – a grandmother – thinks children’s clothing made from denim could also be a big seller. Gilmore – a grandfather – brought in his grandson’s pants about a month ago, and the inmates devised a pattern.

The children’s clothing and jeans jackets could be marketed at retail prices under a federal permitting program called Prison Industry Enterprise, for which the Maine Department of Corrections is already covered.

The name being considered for the brand: Harbor Blues.

Additional paperwork would be needed to show that the Bucks Harbor inmates have been fairly paid for their output.

But it’s the work experience, not the pay, that keeps inmates returning to the shop.

“A lot of these men never had a job on the outside,” Gilmore said. “This isn’t brain surgery, but it’s important for them to come here and do something every day.”

Orrin Goff of Kingsfield, 51, will be released from Downeast next week. He’s been at Bucks Harbor nearly four years, and he hopes to find work driving a truck. But if that plan falls through, he has a fallback – sewing.

“I wish I knew these skills 20 years ago,” Goff said. “That’s what I like about this job. It makes the time go by. You know you’re in jail. You know you’ve done wrong. But something like this helps you make up your mind to do the right thing, to get a job.”