Somerset County Starts Alternative Sentencing Program

After a judge found him guilty of operating under the influence, Marc Farrell, of Bradford, New Hampshire, faced a choice: He could either spend four days at the Somerset County Jail in East Madison or commit to a weekend of community service at a local junior high school. Farrell, 56, chose to pay $225 to spend the weekend at Madison Junior High School, painting the school’s former industrial arts center along with a handful of others convicted of nonviolent minor offenses. “It was less time for me and I’m also not lying in a jail cell staring at the ceiling,” Farrell said during a break from his second and last day of painting.