State Representative Jennifer Rhodes introduced a replace‑all amendment to Senate Bill 15 at a public hearing of the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, saying the measure would reintroduce "hard labor" as a sentencing option for certain serious crimes and carry a two‑year effective date to allow time for implementation.

Rhodes told the committee the amendment is intended to make imprisonment more productive for offenders and to reduce costs to the state. "The provisions that are in this legislation are things that people do every single day to support their families," she said. Rhodes said a person who declines hard labor under the bill would have "50% added on to the life of their sentence." She also said the bill is not intended to be derogatory toward work and suggested it could help victims by shifting emphasis toward victims' needs.

The committee's hearing drew operational questions from members and detailed implementation concerns from the Department of Corrections (DOC). Jane Graham, communications and legislative administrator for the DOC, said the department was taking a neutral position but warned the committee the agency has not yet completed a full resource assessment. Graham noted the bill's two‑year lead time and said the department needs flexibility to define hard labor and to suspend it on any day staffing or safety concerns make it unsafe.

Nicholas Duffy, director of rehabilitative services for the DOC, described existing work programs and the precautions the department now applies when taking inmates into the community. He said correctional industries and transitional work centers already employ inmates in shops and roadwork, and that in 2024 the department performed about 35,000 hours of community service. Duffy said roughly 250 men and about 30 women work in correctional industry shops behind the walls, about 60 at the Northern Correctional Facility, and about 90 in transitional work centers who go outside the walls under supervision.

Graham and Duffy told the committee that many of the activities listed by the bill — farming, forestry, construction and other manual labor — already exist in some fashion inside the system, but that expanding such work would require staff and equipment. Graham said the DOC absorbed a $25,000,000 reduction in the most recent budget cycle and currently has a roughly 47% vacancy rate among corrections officers. She said higher‑risk crews would require additional vehicles, security outfitting, and armed supervision in some cases.

Committee members pressed practical questions about custody classifications and supervision. Representative Muse cited the New Hampshire Constitution, asking whether the state could impose the new sentencing on people already serving terms; Muse also raised the risk of mixing inmates serving newly imposed hard‑labor sentences with those who are not subject to it. Graham said the department cannot change past sentences but could apply the policy prospectively and emphasized that implementation details — including how many officers would be required per crew — remain to be determined.

Representative Sher clarified terminology for the record, noting that "capital murder" in New Hampshire historically referred to crimes eligible for the death penalty and that, without a death penalty statute, the term is commonly used interchangeably with first‑degree murder; the committee used the bill's statutory language in the discussion.

Committee members and DOC staff discussed compensation and choice. Graham said pay would follow current inmate pay rates "and no more than that rate." Rhodes had said during introduction that a person could decline hard labor but would face a 50% increase in sentence length; DOC staff said the bill's text allows for certain medical exemptions and other administrative adjustments but that some questions about how treatment programs would interact with a sentence of hard labor would require legal review.

The hearing closed without a committee vote. DOC staff agreed to try to provide a ballpark cost estimate by January so the committee would have figures before the bill reaches the floor; Graham and Duffy repeatedly said a detailed fiscal estimate will depend on the classification levels of people affected and on specific implementation decisions the commissioner would make if the statute is enacted.

The hearing record shows a sustained operational focus from members and administration witnesses: the bill proposes a significant change to how the DOC places, staffs and supervises inmate labor both inside and potentially outside correctional facilities, and the department said its ability to implement the program depends on additional resources, vacancy reduction, and detailed rulemaking authority.