Section 49B. Prisoners in state correctional institutions, except prisoners who are housed in the maximum security section at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction, may, in the custody of an officer, be eligible to provide services for patients in residential care at facilities of the department of mental health, the department of developmental services or the department of public health or provide care of public lands or buildings and grounds. No prisoner may participate in a program under this section unless he has been screened both by the committee established under the provisions of section forty-nine A for the correctional institution wherein he is confined and by a member of the professional staff of the institution at which he is to provide such care or service, who shall be designated by the head of said institution or the person in charge of such public lands or buildings. Any prisoner who escapes from the premises at which he is providing care or service under this section shall be deemed to have escaped from the institution of which he is an inmate. No prisoner, except as provided in section forty-nine, shall be employed outside the precincts of the place of his imprisonment doing work of any kind for private persons.

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No person who is serving a sentence for violation of or for an attempt to commit any crime referred to in section two, three, four, five, six, seven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-eight, twenty-eight A, twenty-eight B, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty A, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-four, thirty-five or thirty-five A of chapter two hundred and seventy-two or section thirteen B, 13B1/2, 13B3/4, twenty-two, twenty-two A, 22B, 22C, twenty-three, 23A, 23B, twenty-four, twenty-four B of chapter two hundred and sixty-five or who is under commitment under the provisions of chapter one hundred and twenty-three A may participate in a program under the provisions of this section.