"We'll have them going out into the community and giving something back to the community," says Rock County Sheriff, Bob Spoden.

A new program intended to reduce the number of inmates housed in the already overcrowded Rock County Jail is officially in the works. The Workender Program, as it's called, will take non-violent inmates and allow them to serve their sentence from home while participating in weekly community service assignments.

"I'm hopeful that the rest of our community looks at this as an opportunity to reach out and make a positive change and at the same time see that justice is done."

Modeled after a program already in place in Colorado, the Workender Program will free-up the 64 dollars a day it costs to house inmates, thus saving the city thousands of dollars. Inmates will also be able to work and pay off their jail fine.

"Right now we have as of today 509 people physically housed in here," says jail administrator, Tom Gehl.

And of those 509 inmates, they'll begin the program with 20. Those accepted must comply with specific requirements other wise they'll be sent back to jail.

"We'll do random checks with our patrol division. So in other words they're still going to be kept in a certain amount of control," says Spoden.

Authorities plan on starting the program as early as this June and have already received interest from nearby counties wanting to follow suit.