The Corrections Reporter is taking a short break. We will return after Labor Day, Sept. 7 2010.

jchev Personnel Issues

Imagine that every day you wake up in an airport security line. Now imagine that the security check is taking place on the airplane itself, in coach, on a very full flight. The overhead bins are full, so just below the seat pocket in front of you, the soles of your feet are pressed against your carry-on bag and one personal item. Complete story, with many photos, available at Wired.

Your knees are bent as though you were about to spring from a high-dive. TSA employees work their way down the aisle, opening bags and swapping passengers’ shoes. You fidget in your seat, bumping your neighbor with every movement. His breath and body odor float over you –- aerosolized humanity wafting into a cabin full of sweaty smells.

It’s time for a distraction. The TV works, but the Feds have banned MP3 players on airplanes. Luckily, you came prepared with a DiscMan and Case Logic folder full of CDs. See, there was a reason why you never threw them away.

In California’s San Quentin State Prison, inmates spend most of their day on board this metaphorical 747. Their two-man cells are tiny, their personal belongings may take up just 6 cubic feet of space –- the equivalent of shoving your life’s possessions into four carry-on bags. Though they spend years waiting for takeoff, they are permitted to use approved electronic devices in the meantime.

As Lil’ Wayne recently learned, some electronic devices are definitely not approved. In his case, having unauthorized earphones and iPod in his cell landed him in trouble with the authorities at Riker’s Island, where he is serving a short stint for a weapons charge.

The California Department of Corrections allows inmates to have many different electronic entertainment gizmos, from TVs to radios to CD players, but every one must be ready for a close inspection at any time. The inspections are designed to ensure that inmates don’t open electronic devices and stash contraband, but also to prevent them from removing components that can be fashioned into weapons.

The inspection is so thorough, in fact, that the prisons only allow devices that have been repackaged in clear plastic cases to prevent stashing contraband within. There is a whole industry of consumer products made specifically for prisons, supplying unsharpenable toothbrushes along with cosmetic gels in transparent tubes.

Despite these precautions, inmates continue to make improvised weapons out of the most innocuous materials, including wetting newspaper and forming it into a lethal spear. Hard to believe, perhaps, but in 1985 a San Quentin inmate fatally stabbed a corrections officer with papier-mâché shiv.

Though CSI and other media portrayals often show immaculate, high-tech prisons, the reality is often much different. Cells at San Quentin can be cluttered with clothes, bedding, and personal property.

Electronics with clear casings are a fairly new phenomenon at California correctional institutions. They were introduced at San Quentin within the last decade, says Lt. Samuel Robinson, the prison’s public information officer.

The requirement is particularly valuable when it comes to inspecting televisions, which are easily damaged by X-rays and must be inspected manually. At present, inmates are allowed to keep electronics with standard black exteriors if they were purchased before the new transparent-housing rules went into effect.

TVs with standard nontransparent cases must be routinely disassembled, inspected, and put back together. Correctional officers place wax seals on each of the device’s exterior screws and regularly check to see if the seals are still intact. The system isn’t perfect, and inmates have found ways of breaking the seals and reapplying them.

Much more

jchev California, Inmate Property

The Department of Corrections received a grant from the Oregon Zoo to rehabilitate an endangered species of frog that lives in the Pacific Northwest. The staff and offenders at Cedar Creek Corrections Center have had a higher success rate at rearing the Oregon spotted frog than zoos and nature centers in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. News release from the WA DOC.

“It’s a remarkable achievement for a prison to receive a scientific grant,” Acting Prisons Director Dan Pacholke said. “It’s good for our staff and offenders, and it’s good for the local ecology.”

Last year the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife released 83 Oregon spotted frogs from Cedar Creek Corrections Center in marshes on Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Pierce County. The prison expects to release about that many again this year.

The frog rehabilitation is part of the Sustainable Prisons Project, a partnership between the Department of Corrections and The Evergreen State College. The project is designed to reduce operational costs by developing sustainable practices, reduce prisons’ impact on the environment and connect offenders to nature.

Part of the $5,000 grant will be used to raise crickets for the frogs to eat. The Department of Fish and Wildlife currently has to import crickets from Southeastern states due to a local shortage.

“Raising the crickets at the prison is another way we’re reducing our carbon footprint and making the project more sustainable,” said Kelli Bush, the project manager of the Sustainable Prisons Project.

Prison administrators credit including offenders in scientific projects like frog rehabilitation as one of the reasons prison violence has dramatically decreased the past two years.

“When an offender has researchers and biologists coming up and asking them for their input on scientific projects, it gives the offender a sense of pride and accomplishment,” Pacholke said. “And when offenders have a sense of purpose they are less likely to get involved in criminal activity, whether it’s in a prison or in the community.”

Zoo officials say they are impressed with the rehabilitation effort at Cedar Creek Corrections Center.

“Everyone should be proud of the work being done by the staff and offenders at the Department of Corrections,” said Kim Smith, Oregon Zoo director. “They are truly making a difference in the recovery of this species.”

jchev Environment and Energy, Inmate Programs, Washington

A new high security prison in Canon City is preparing to open its doors to problem prisoners and officials say the new facility is long overdue. The Centennial Correctional Facility is located in east Canon City. The facility was approved by legislature in 2002, but several lawsuits and budget cuts delayed construction until 2007. Reported in the Colorado Connection.

Wednesday the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) held a dedication ceremony for the new facility. For prisoners the Centennial Correctional Facility is the end of the line.

“This is a 24 hour a day lock down. We have a five level security classifications system. This is level five which is the highest level,” said Ari Zavaras, Executive Director of the DOC.

Officials say prisoners who are problems at other facilities will end up in single cells at the Centennial Correctional Facility.

“Individuals that come into this setting do what we call in the system earn their way into this facility. It’s by their behavior as opposed to what their crime was,” said Zavaras.

The facility has 948 high security beds in three towers. But because they are so expensive to run, only one tower will open in September.

Zavaras says to operate one tower costs a little over $10 million. Each tower holds 316 high security beds and the one that is opening will be filled to capacity almost immediately.

“We’ve had a backup in our high security beds so we’ll be able to get some of those individuals who are backed into facilities right now into this facility and start the programming,” said Zavaras.

Attorney General John Suthers says the need for this facility goes back to 2001. “Make no mistake about it, anyone who knows this business knows that adequate high security beds are absolutely essential to the proper and safe functioning of an effective Department of Corrections,” said Suthers.

Officials say the goal of the Centennial Correctional Facility is to teach problem prisoners better behavior and prepare them to return to society as a contributing member.

The Centennial Correctional Facility will officially open on September 1.They will accept 15 prisoners a day until capacity is reached.

jchev Colorado, Jail and Prison Construction

The federal receiver in charge of prison medicine considers one facility the gold standard for inmate care. The Central Medical Facility looks and feels different than other state prisons. The halls are wider to ease the way for inmates in wheelchairs. Those halls are busier, too. The prison’s chief medical officer, Dr. Joseph Bick, says that’s because most of these prisoners pose little security risk. Report from Southern California Public Radio.

“Most of them move about the facility unescorted,” says Bick. “They have a little pass. They may be going to school, work or to a doctor’s appointment to get their blood drawn.”

Inmates chronically or terminally ill
Bick points into the prison’s gymnasium window. Most prisons have to use gyms as dorms. Here, the inmates use the gym to exercise. There’s no overcrowding, because to be in the Central Medical Facility, an inmate has to be chronically or terminally ill.

“The overwhelming majority of the 3000 prisoners here have some major medical problem, often multiple,” Bick says. “You see them walking around, they may be going to work or school. But they may have hepatitis, major mental illness, HIV disease, diabetes, asthma.”

Bick says most of the inmates at the Central Medical Facility can feed, dress and bathe themselves, but they need to be close to medical help.

The prison’s medical mandate inspires a professional tone between the staff and inmates. Bick says he treats inmates with respect, which earns their trust. He stops to talk to prisoners in the hallways. He calls by name to a passing inmate. They shake hands.

“Oh hey, Dr. Bick! How you doing?” the inmate says.

Not exactly ‘Cadillac care’
Prisons are typically noisy places. Bick tries to turn down the volume inside his medical clinics.

Prisons often treat inmates in converted cells, broom closets or storage rooms. Bick’s clinic is a real clinic. It’s clean, white and quiet. Bick says one of the biggest unexpected benefits of that clinic is that it changes the way his patients behave.

“They come into an environment that is clearly designated as a medical environment, their voices come down.”

Bick says his modern clinic also attracts a better staff. But he says it doesn’t administer “Cadillac care.” Ask Johntae Bailey.

He was waiting for a dental appointment when his bad tooth got so bad that it woke him up in the middle of the night. A guard told Bailey he couldn’t get an emergency appointment unless his jaw was swollen.

“And I told him how’s it not a medical emergency if my tooth is throbbing and it’s killing me and I cannot sleep?” says Bailey.

Bailey asked the guard to check his file; there they found his three-week-old request to see a dentist. Bailey says the prison’s dentists care about their inmate patients.

“It just takes a long time to get there – I want you to hear it: It takes a long time to get in there!” Bailey laughs.

But Bailey says he’s waited longer for medical care at other prisons. He should know – he’s cycled through a few for drug sales or parole violations.

“You can put in a medical slip, and three or four weeks will pass and you won’t get to see them until then,” Bailey says. “That’s why you hear the alarm go off a lot of times. Because people know they got a long wait, so they just go ‘man down’ so the medical will come to them.” When an inmate goes “man down” he collapses on the floor.

Inmates’ health a public health issue
Bick says there’s usually some truth to inmate complaints – and he investigates them. He also knows few Californians care about better inmate care. But most of these prisoners will get out one day. Bick says that makes inmates’ health a public health issue that concerns everyone.

“If we don’t do something to diagnose and treat the treatable diseases while they’re here,” Bick warns, “educate them about prevention of transmission of some of the illnesses they have, and then link them to services in the community when they get out – if prisons fail to do that, we’ve squandered a huge opportunity.”

Clark Kelso, the federal receiver in charge of prison medical care, considers Vacaville’s Central Medical Facility to be the best in the state prison system.

He wants a hub of similar places to cluster the sickest inmates together. The cost of sending sick inmates for care outside the prison has doubled since the receiver took over to $845 million in the most recent fiscal year. Kelso says treating them in prison facilities would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

In June, state lawmakers approved $2 billion to build Kelso’s medical hub. But it’ll take three years to complete the main building in Stockton and that medical facility will have only enough beds for half the number of inmates with chronic or serious conditions.

jchev California, Inmate Health Care

A plan that taps criminals to help pay the cost of their court-ordered supervision was approved Tuesday by Saline County commissioners. The 28th District Community Corrections is reimbursed for various services it provides offenders it supervises, such as drug testing and program fees. Each year, Community Corrections must submit a plan to the Kansas Department of Corrections, approved by county commissions in Saline and Ottawa counties. The two counties make up the 28th Judicial District. News from the Saline Journal.

Ottawa County commissioners have already approved the request, Community Corrections director Annie Grevas told commissioners.

“The reason we collect reimbursement dollars is so we can afford to provide more services,” Grevas told commissioners.

The reimbursement account totals $268,419.92. Community Corrections typically spends between $50,000 and $60,000 annually from the account to supplement its operating budget.

Extra dollars from the account will pay for employee overtime, gasoline and transportation costs, staff training, drug testing offenders and other client services, Grevas said.

Commissioners on Tuesday also approved a request to transfer funds within the agency’s 2010 budget. The funds, totaling $33,587.96, were left over from salary and benefits not paid due to the county’s salary freeze and lower-than-anticipated insurance costs.

The fund transfer will cover the cost of updating computer equipment, offender drug testing supplies and office expenses, Grevas said.

Both the reimbursement budget and fund transfer request are to be forwarded to the Kansas Department of Corrections for approval before they can take effect.

Grevas also spoke to the commission about the agency’s fiscal year-end report to the corrections department on outcomes from its offender intervention programs.

The agency exceeded its goal of reducing by 20 percent the number of offenders in fiscal 2006 who were revoked and sent to prison for violating the terms of their supervision. The 2006 number was a benchmark set for community corrections agencies by state lawmakers, Grevas said. That year there were 90 offenders revoked by her agency. For fiscal 2010, which ended June 30, there were 56 offenders revoked, a reduction of about 38 percent.

jchev Community Corrections, KS Saline County

An audit ordered by the Kansas Department of Corrections to identify possible exposure of inmates and employees to asbestos prompted abatement work at two correctional facilities and raised the possibility of remediation at dozens of sites in the future. “Asbestos-containing materials were found in various buildings at DOC facilities,” said Bill Miskell, spokesman for corrections department. News reported in the Topeka Capital-Journal.

He said the $170,000 assessment of pipe insulation, ceiling material, floor tile and other products likely to contain asbestos was a direct response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s report documenting KDOC’s past mishandling of asbestos removal.

KDOC officials responded to the systemwide audit by reallocating $75,000 for abatement of pipe wrapping or ceiling tile at the Lansing and Winfield prisons, but say government regulations don’t require immediate elimination of asbestos found elsewhere in the prisons.

The review will help KDOC properly manage asbestos contamination during future demolitions or renovations, Miskell said.

The limited clean-up didn’t satisfy a Kansas labor union official representing state corrections officers or the Alma lawyer who prompted a federal investigation in February of suspected improper handling of asbestos at Topeka Correctional Facility.

“Why wait until something bad happens and someone is exposed?” said Jane Carter, executive director of the 10,000-member Kansas Organization of State Employees.

Limited action now
The analysis by private contractors touched prisons in El Dorado, Ellsworth, Hutchinson, Larned, Norton, Stockton, Wichita, Lansing, Winfield and Topeka.

“We want to ensure that any KDOC renovation or repair project is done in a safe and appropriate manner and that the one project found by the EPA to be inappropriately done remains an isolated event,” Miskell said.

The examination followed EPA’s report in March detailing how state prison officials violated federal law during abatement of asbestos-tainted flooring in a TCF dormitory. The prison in East Topeka houses 500 female felony offenders and employs more than 200 people.

Controversy at TCF centered on a 2005 project in which untrained and ill-equipped prisoners and staff members were deployed with heavy equipment to pulverize the flooring for disposal. Occupational exposure to microscopic particles of asbestos poses potentially lethal health risks.

EPA investigators determined KDOC violated the Clean Air Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act by failing to test the TCF building for asbestos prior to demolition and neglecting to provide respiratory protection, training, supervision, assessment and monitoring of people assigned to the project.

Subsequent violations at Kansas prisons could trigger fines and penalties against KDOC, said Chris Whitley, spokesman for EPA in Kansas City, Kan.

Richard Koerner, the TCF warden during the asbestos miscue five years ago, resigned in January, hours before release of a consultant’s report outlining proposed management reforms at the prison following exposure of a sex scandal involving prison staff members and inmates. Allegations of sexual impropriety and of racial and gender discrimination were raised in 2009 by The Topeka Capital-Journal.

The new tests
Laboratory testing of samples from the new asbestos audit obtained by The Capital-Journal indicate the material was identified in dozens of locations in state prison buildings.

KDOC issued a $68,000 contract for abatement of asbestos pipe insulation above a restroom, classroom and library at Lansing Correctional Facility. At Winfield Correctional Facility, the department ordered removal of asbestos-contaminated ceiling in three hallways of a dormitory, pipe insulation in a separate dormitory and pipe insulation used for staff development. The work at Winfield cost $7,000.

At TCF, the assessment indicated thousands of square feet of floor tile in the prison contained asbestos. It was in the staff lounge, control center, dental clinic, chaplain’s office, restrooms, library, teachers’ lounge, hallways and beauty shop.

In at least two dormitories at TCF, inspectors detected asbestos-infused glue residue on the floor of inmate rooms. The glue had been applied to hold down asbestos tile that was pulled out by abatement firms hired by KDOC in 2007 and 2008.

Miskell said “mastic” on the floor wasn’t an immediate health hazard.

“The department will have it removed by an asbestos abatement contractor at a time when further renovation is done on the building,” he said.

While contamination wasn’t detected at Ellsworth or El Dorado prisons, auditors found asbestos in Hutchinson Correctional Facility’s cell and office flooring, pipe chases, gym walls and textured ceiling. The material was noted in ceiling and floor tile, as well as sheet vinyl and insulation at Norton Correctional Facility. At Stockton Correctional Facility, inspectors found asbestos in exposed floor glue and vinyl sheeting.

Asbestos material was identified in the Wichita Work Release Facility’s boiler and mechanical rooms, as well as about 300 pipe joints. Larned Correctional Facility had asbestos flooring, pipe joints and insulation.

Not enough
Carter, leader of the union serving corrections employees, said the state should develop a comprehensive plan for ridding correctional institutions of potentially harmful asbestos.

“Why not remove it now?” Carter said. “They’re putting inmates and staff at risk, but also the public.”

Miskell said KDOC didn’t have to immediately address asbestos in forms or locations not currently posing a health threat to people.

In 2009, lawyer Keen Umbehr sought an investigation by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment of asbestos contamination at the Topeka prison for women. KDHE turned the case over to the EPA, which performed inspections at TCF, leading to the finding against the state.

Umbehr said repairs ordered at Lansing and Winfield suggested the state had determined both facilities were out of compliance with state and federal law.

He said a public examination of past asbestos projects at state prisons should be conducted to determine whether improper activity was isolated or widespread. The state’s next governor should support a broad inquiry, he said.

“It doesn’t matter whether it is prisoners, correction officers or other workers performing the job of removing asbestos,” he said. “There is no ’safe’ level of asbestos exposure.”

jchev Environment and Energy, Kansas

State prison inmates trying to earn parole, many of them with alcohol and drug abuse backgrounds, face a shortage of treatment programs they need to attend as a condition of being set free. Alan Coburn, a member of the Adult Parole Board, told a committee studying parole issues yesterday that because treatment options are few, many inmates ready for release remain behind bars for up to a year while they wait their turn. Story in the Union Leader.

Substance abuse treatment and mental health counseling are considered keys to the success of a new state plan to move inmates out of prison more quickly, and focus corrections costs on the most dangerous inmates in custody.

The majority of state prison inmates have drug or alcohol problems, studies have shown. Coburn said demand for treatment upon release is so great that if beds were to double at the Tirrell House he oversees in Manchester, “those beds would be full tomorrow.” The number of treatment facilities around the state has steadily eroded over the past decade, complicating parole decisions, Coburn said.

“In many cases, we feel if we do release them before treatment, they’ll never make it to the program because they’ll relapse while they’re outside waiting,” he said.

The study committee on parole practices was established by the Legislature before it passed the more comprehensive Justice Reinvestment Act. The act is meant to cut what the state spends on corrections facilities. It will allow most non-violent inmates to be paroled after they serve 120 percent of their minimum sentence. They will be expected to stick to counseling sessions and other requirements spelled out in the conditions of their parole, or face a guaranteed 90-day return trip to prison.

The bill was supported by Gov. John Lynch, corrections officials, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick and Attorney General Michael Delaney. Parole officers opposed the bill, saying their workload is already so high they will be unable to keep up with the increased number of parolees.

John Eckert, executive assistant to the Adult Parole Board, said that records from the Corrections department show that more inmates are being sent to prison for new offenses, not parole violations on things like alcohol abuse of moving without notifying parole officers.

Between September 2009 and March 2010, he said, roughly 60 percent of inmates were committed on new criminal activity, about double what had been the case until recently.

Eckert said he disagrees with statements made at an earlier committee meeting that it is difficult for inmates to win parole.

“We parole at least three-quarters of the people we see, which nationally is about the highest,” Eckert said. “I’ve had a consultant come in and say, ‘Wow. That’s awfully high.’/” It is common for parole to be approved, but for an inmate to linger behind bars waiting for treatment or trying to arrange for a job or rental housing, Eckert said.

Joseph Diament, who heads the new community corrections division at the Department of Corrections, said after the hearing that treatment facilities that closed did so because of low reimbursement from private insurers, not because of state budget cuts.

Diament said the state is taking bids from companies that would set up a series of state operated counseling centers to support parolees and probationers. The centers would be operated through a $900,000 federal grant.

jchev Community Corrections, Drug Treatment & Diversion, Inmate Programs

The future of Larch Corrections Center remains an open question 11 days after Gov. Chris Gregoire announced that the minimum-security prison near Hockinson likely will close as a result of across-the-board budget cuts this fall. Anxious Larch employees thought they had won a temporary reprieve Friday, when Dan Pacholke, acting director of prisons for the Department of Corrections, sought to quell their fears of an immediate closure. Report from The Columbian.

“There has been speculation that Larch is closing on Oct. 1,” Pacholke wrote in his weekly message to prison staff members. “Today there simply is no such plan.”

The prison caseload “continues to trend above the forecast and we really aren’t in a position to close anything more than what we are already prepared to do,” he wrote.

Pacholke said in an interview that Larch corrections employees shouldn’t read too much into his message.

“The context around that is that there are no plans to close Larch today,” he said. “It is not part of any closure plan, any document that exists. Really what I wanted to do was respond to a rumor that Larch will close Oct. 1, and that is not the case.”

He added, “What I do is read the newspaper. We continue to go through budget exercises with state government. I don’t know what tomorrow holds.”

Larch was downsized from 480 beds to 240 this year as part of a plan to consolidate prison beds statewide. In an agreement brokered by the House of Representatives, the Corrections Department agreed to also shrink the medium-security prison on McNeil Island near Tacoma from 1,200 to 256 inmates by next March. Pacholke said the McNeil Island prison population is on schedule to drop to 512 inmates by Sept. 15.

Cutting deeper?
Corrections chief Eldon Vail told The Columbian the closure of Larch would save about $2.5 million in the first six months of 2011, which would amount to roughly 10 percent of the $25 million the department might have to whack from its budget to deal with another looming state deficit.

Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis said Monday it’s possible the department could be required to cut deeper, slashing as much as $50 million from its $1.8 billion operating budget between now and June 30, 2011.

Some Larch employees and former employees believe far more savings could be realized by closing the McNeil Island prison, which is one of the state’s most expensive prisons to operate because everything and everyone must be transported by ferry.

“Why is this fair?” asked Pat Edwards, a former classification counselor at Larch who was laid off in April. “How much is the burden being shared? Clark County is bearing the burden for the entire state of Washington and we have the highest unemployment rate in the state.”

“Personally, the suspense of the closure over the last nine months has created a lot of anxiety and uncertainty,” said Vince Robinson, a counselor at Larch for the past seven years. “I wonder where or when to enroll my kids in school, whether to sign new contracts or to not buy anything larger than the trunk of my car.”

Legislators from Southwest Washington came together to save Larch during the 2010 legislative session. But as Gregoire searches for ways to cut 4 to 7 percent from state agencies by mid-2011, nothing is off-limits.

The potential cuts come as the prison system is experiencing a higher caseload than forecast when the budget was adopted. “If this trend continues it gets increasingly difficult to cut beds,” Pacholke said.

Could empty Larch beds actually be needed to meet the demand?

“Anything is possible,” he said.

jchev Economic Issues, Prison Closures, Washington

State officials say it will be a while before the Swannanoa Valley Youth Development Center sees a new facility. “We thought about building a new facility, and then the economy went south, and we lost all our funding,” William Lassiter, spokesperson for the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, said. Reported in the Black Mountain News.

The center still needs to be either replaced or upgraded to bring it up to modern standards, but Lassiter doesn’t see that happening “for at least two or three years.” The most recent state budget has the facility remaining in its current home for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2011.

When a move or upgrade does finally happen, Lassiter said the department would prefer to keep the site in Buncombe County. The department needs a facility in Western North Carolina to keep inmates close to their families, and the county is seen as the hub of the region, he said.

It’s also possible a new facility could be in the Swannanoa Valley.

“It might be right there on campus, or it might be a couple miles down the road,” he said.

Either way, he said, the department will work with current employees to find them employment at a new youth center or elsewhere.

Some employees of the youth center could potentially move to the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women, which opened at the youth center campus in July 2008. When construction finishes in September, the women’s prison will house 356 inmates.

That’s a substantial increase from the 90 inmates housed at the old women’s prison off North Fork Road.

The old women’s prison was converted into the Black Mountain Women’s Susbtance Abuse Treatment Center, which opened in April this year and celebrated a grand opening last month.

In an interview at the grand opening, Jennie Patterson, the chief deputy secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Corrections said workers at the Swannanoa Valley Youth Development Center would be given priority employment rights for openings at the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women.

State laws require state employees be given priority for open state employment positions, and also requires departments to help employees when a branch or facility is closed, she said.

“I really think there’s no reason to be worried about jobs,” Patterson said.

jchev Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Juvenile Justice, North Carolina

If Washington has a school of hard knocks, its registrar’s office can be found at a prison in Shelton. Most days men come there by the busload, shuffling into the Washington Corrections Center for their introduction — or reintroduction — to the state prison system. Story from the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

The Shelton prison is largely a 1,600-man holding facility for convicts headed to the 10 other men’s prisons scattered throughout the state. Any man not headed to death row comes through on his way into the system.

Shelton is where decisions get made, where offenders with mental illnesses, behavior problems or, now, gang affiliations get noticed. And it’s where, Department of Corrections officials say, a recent reduction in prison violence has its roots.

Despite a hardening of state prison populations in recent years as the number of non-violent offenders in custody has fallen, prison violence rates have dropped to levels not seen since 2006.

Several of the state’s larger prisons have seen 20 percent decreases in the number of infractions issued for violent behavior during the past two years, according to Department of Corrections statistics. Only the state Corrections Center for Women at Purdy has seen a marked increase.

“We have less prison beds than we had two years ago,” said Dan Pacholke, acting director of prisons for the Department of Corrections. “We have less nonviolent offenders than we had two years ago. … We’re doing this at a time when the density of violent offenders is higher.”

Speaking at the Shelton prison, Pacholke credited new programs and tactics targeted at keeping staff and inmates safe.

Part of it has been soft — time with dogs and frogs, craft nights and extended visits with family. Part has been harder, including a move to segregate inmates by their gang affiliation.

Gangs and violence
Nelious Horsley knows gangs, and he knows violence. A corded scar rises from his clavicle up the left side of his neck. It traces the path cut during a Clallam Bay Corrections Center riot when another inmate shoved a 7-inch improvised knife into his right lung.

Since joining a Tacoma street gang at age 11, Horsley had been shot five times before he was stabbed at Clallam Bay. He’s a certain kind of lucky. Speaking during an interview arranged by the Department of Corrections, Horsley said he believes the new anti-violence initiatives are working.

While populating cellblocks with members of the same gang may make it harder for members to get out, he said he believes inmates can break away. In his experience, he said, prison staff is willing to listen if someone says they want out of the gang life.

Horsley said it took him 24 years to decide he was done with it. By the time he is done serving his time on his current gun and drug offenses — June 2011 at the earliest — he’ll have spent more than half his life in Department of Corrections custody.

“I lost my wife, my kids,” the 38-year-old said. “I lost everything.”

Like many of the 3,200 or so gang-involved convicts, Horsley was raised in the gang. Members were like family. There was a time he didn’t expect to leave them, and felt sure he’d spend the rest of his life in prison.

The idea that he should change came slowly. There was his cousin, another inmate, telling him he needed to do something else. There was his brother’s funeral, an event he missed because prison staff didn’t think he could safely attend.

Starting his current sentence — a five-year-maximum term for drug dealing and unlawful gun possession — he said he decided he was done with the gang. Since then, Horsley has joined a group of inmates called on to greet new arrivals at the Shelton facility, where he encourages them to move away from gangs and violence.

Horsley’s test will come when he gets out. It’s one he says he’s prepared to pass. “I’ve had two years of the good life, the legal life, so I kinda know what that feels like,” he said Wednesday. “It’s like I tell my class, once you give the legal life a shot and start feeling really good, it shouldn’t be that hard to go back and get it.”

Walking the block
Pacholke, the acting prisons director for the Department of Corrections, said he is more worried about the gang violence than the gangs themselves. Gang members behaving themselves don’t hurt his officers or inmates.

“I’m not as concerned about gang membership as I am about behavior in prison,” Pacholke said. “You can be a gang member, but if you’re a violent gang member then we’re going to more intensively manage you.”

When men like Horsley decide to make a change, Sgt. Alfred Smack is among the Department of Corrections employees they talk to. A 10-year veteran of the Department of Corrections and one who handles intake into the prison system at Shelton, Smack said staff has gotten better at hearing the whispers. There are no secrets in prison, he said, and staff has to know how to discretely talk to the inmates.

When inmates housed with their gang decide they want out, they’re “stepped down” into a less restrictive unit to see if they’re sincere, Smack said. If they behave, they get access to the programs and privileges that make prison more bearable.

Small concessions — a cheeseburgers or chicken nuggets for a cell block that doesn’t brawl, extra time with family for individual inmates — make a difference in prison. Smack said people who envision the movies or the HBO series “OZ” when they think of prison miss the variety.

At Shelton, there are gardens and barbed wire, GED classrooms and one-man cells with slits for windows. Mostly, though, there are bored men waiting in their cells. Some are mentally ill, some are weak and easy prey. Some are predators.

Walking through a “close custody” unit — meant to house offenders who don’t warrant solitary confinement but are judged too dangerous for medium security — Washington Corrections Center Superintendent Doug Waddington gets attention.

As he passes, stubbly faces pop into the glassless windows cut into steel doors. The men have questions for him — one man’s concerned about access to religious services, most just want to know what he’s up to. Waddington listens politely; He can spend hours in the blocks.

Elsewhere in the system, inmates raise dogs and frogs in an effort to rehabilitate them. Soon, some will be breeding butterflies. Shelton boasts more GED graduations than any other prison in the system, an achievement at a facility that keeps most inmates for about six weeks. There are also the small things like the arts and crafts night, where men are allowed to put join their children in the visiting room.

“It sounds goofy,” Waddington said. “It’s not really about building a birdhouse or something like that.”

What it is about, he said, is creating incentives for the inmates to behave. Beyond that, though, the superintendent said its about giving them a connection to life outside the prison, one that they can choose to support when — as nearly all Washington offenders do — they get out of prison.

The big prize in prison, as several offenders noted, is an extended family visit — a 21-to-45-hour stay in a one-bedroom trailer with family. Inside, inmates and their families get to cook their own food. They get to watch television. Parents get to put their kids to bed.

“It’s kind of a normal space in an abnormal setting,” Waddington said. “I think it humanizes this place.”

jchev Gangs (STGs), Washington

The cost of keeping illegal immigrants in prison and providing them with medical care exceeded $250 million last year in Texas, according to state health and corrections officials. The testimony before the House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday came as lawmakers faced a projected state budget shortfall of up to $18 billion. News from the Bloomberg Business Week.

“We want to focus on what the real costs are for state services,” said Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, the committee chairman. “There’s really not a lot of wholly accurate data.”

Jerry McGinty, the Texas Department of Corrections’ chief financial officer, said state prisons held 11,766 offenders who are foreign citizens in July. He said it costs the state about $171 million per year to hold them, although the federal government reimburses about 10 percent of that total.

Rick Allgeyer, director of research for the Health and Human Services Commission, said illegal immigrant health care – mostly emergency hospital care – cost the state nearly $100 million last year.

Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, said an Arizona-type law allowing police to question anyone they stop about their citizenship status could fill every county jail in Texas. “It would bust all our counties,” said Oliveira.

Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, told fellow committee members that when making policy, “you always have to be aware of unintended consequences.”

Gallego said there could be significant effects if law enforcement and other public agencies were asked to reallocate already-sparse resources to check citizenship of people in Texas.

jchev Economic Issues, Illegal Aliens, Inmate Health Care, Texas

A former Washington Department of Corrections administrator who has been working in California will return to become state prison director. The department announced Friday that Bernie Warner will be in charge of 13 Washington prisons, holding more than 16,000 offenders. News from the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

The 55-year-old began his corrections career in 1980 as a counselor at the Washington state Penitentiary and held administrative positions in the 1990s with the state Department of Corrections.

Since 2000 he has worked for prison agencies in Arizona, Florida and California, where he is chief deputy secretary of juvenile justice.

Warner takes the Washington job in October, succeeding Dick Morgan who retired in July.

jchev Personnel Issues, Washington

Today, California spends $1 billion more on medical care for inmates than it did in 2005 when a federal judge found that care so flawed that he seized control of the system and appointed a receiver to improve it. Prison officials say the problem’s now fixed – and it’s time to put them back in charge. But as KPCC reports, California’s prison medical system still lacks critical reforms. Story and links to resources from Southern California Public Radio.

To hear the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Mathew Cate, tell it, California prisons now provide inmates with quality medical care.

“I invite you to go into any prison and walk into any of those medical facilities, and you tell me if it’s not just as good care as you’ll get at Blue Shield or Kaiser or anywhere else,” he said last year.

Blue Shield or Kaiser might not appreciate the comparison. Between 2003-2004, one inmate a week died as a result of poor medical care in state prisons.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson seized control of California’s prison medical care and appointed a receiver to fix it. In his order establishing the receivership, Henderson wrote, an “unconscionable degree of suffering and death is sure to continue if the system is not dramatically overhauled.”

The first receiver, Robert Sillen, went to work in 2006. On his second day on the job Sillen visited medical facilities at San Quentin—California’s oldest prison. What he found there appalled him.

“This isn’t medical care in any way, shape or form that anybody would recognize it,” Sillen said.

Medical conditions ‘worse than Third World’
Back then Sillen called the conditions “worse than Third World.” Medical staff treated prisoners in converted cells with no running water. Lab results didn’t reach doctors for weeks, sometimes months. At San Quentin, Sillen’s staff found unprocessed X-rays that showed inmates with active tuberculosis.

“Transcribed results were coming back and sitting in a pile on the floor – literally hundreds and hundreds of them – because there was only one person to deal with them,” Sillen said. “She happened to be out sick.”

Sillen found similar delays in lab results, and delayed diagnosis and treatment, at all of California’s 33 adult prisons. He also found that Corrections had failed to pay outside doctors and hospitals for services going back months and in some cases years. Those facilities were refusing to treat California’s inmates because of it.

Sillen, the former medical director for Santa Clara County, found the problems in prison medical care so numerous that there was no way to tackle them all at once. So he concentrated on what he described as the best and quickest way to improve conditions: he would bring in quality doctors to lead prison medical teams and force out incompetent ones.

In his two years as receiver Sillen dismissed dozens of incompetent doctors. He also raised prison doctors’ salaries to attract better qualified staff.

Inmates missed medical appointments about half the time
Today, roughly half the doctors working in California’s prisons are board certified. About 10 percent of physician positions are still vacant. But it used to be 30 percent.

Still, even the best doctors and nurses can’t provide better care to inmates if they don’t see them. That’s why Sillen hired Joe McGrath, a former deputy secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“My job really was to try to put together a custody support team that was part of the healthcare side of the house,” McGrath recounted.

McGrath visited all 33 of California’s prisons to identify systemic problems in the delivery of medical care. One problem emerged in every prison: inmates missed medical appointments about half the time.

McGrath said that prison administrators were already juggling staff to get inmates to meals, classes and work. Getting them to prison medical clinics required extra guards they couldn’t afford.

“They have to be escorted outside of security areas over to these medical facilities,” McGrath said.

And since many prisons lack the doctors or equipment to treat inmates, “They have to be put in cars and taken downtown to doctors or to the hospital.”

McGrath said prisons have to orchestrate the movement of inmates all day long.

“Unless you have dedicated staff to the health care piece, it just falls by the wayside,” McGrath said.

Doctor cops assigned to get inmates to medical appointments
McGrath recalled one inmate who fell by the wayside at San Quentin’s reception center. Reception centers are where CDCR processes inmates entering the prison system to determine which facility to send them to serve their terms.

McGrath said the inmate was awaiting transfer to another prison to serve a drug sentence of less than two years.

“While in reception, he gets an abscessed tooth,” McGrath said. “Through a series of events and mishaps, he didn’t get the antibiotics that he needed. The abscess got into his blood. He was septic and he died.”

McGrath’s team of corrections consultants decided to address inmates’ access problem with what he calls the creation of “doctor’s cops” – a squad of 2,400 correctional officers whose sole purpose is to get inmates to medical appointments. Every prison in the state has some now and inmates now make their appointments 88 percent of the time.

Recession stymies improvements
In 2009, CDCR was poised to add 350 more “doctor’s cops” when the current receiver, Clark Kelso, froze hiring.

“I don’t have a bottomless checkbook here,” Kelso later explained. “I do have to account for how those funds are being spent. They’re taxpayer dollars.”

Kelso took over as the receiver two years ago – just as California was slipping into the worst recession since World War II.

In his order replacing Sillen, Henderson said he wanted to usher in a new phase of the receivership – one in which control of prison medical care would begin to transition back to the state.

Kelso, a professor at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law, fit the bill. Kelso had earned a reputation in Sacramento as a fixer. He did that by sweeping up after former Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush who resigned in 2000 amid allegations of corruption. Kelso most recently turned around the state’s information technology department.

Kelso’s first public action as the receiver of prison medical care was to scale back his predecessor’s improvement plan. But even so, lawmakers balked at the cost. Kelso wanted $8 billion to construct seven new prison hospitals and renovate medical facilities at all the prisons.

But the timing was bad. California lawmakers faced a multibillion-dollar deficit and still do.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get funding, Kelso worked closely with the secretary of Corrections to lessen the costs. But the Schwarzenegger administration – which had backed the smaller, $2 billion plan – pulled its support at the last minute.

After a couple more years of wrangling, state lawmakers finally approved the receiver’s construction funds in June – but they simultaneously cut his budget for on-going medical care in half.

jchev California, Inmate Health Care

After three violent criminals escaped from a private prison last month in Kingman, state officials began asking why they had been assigned to a medium-security facility. John McCluskey, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick escaped July 30 after an embarrassing series of security lapses at the prison, operated by Utah-based Management and Training Corp. Story from the Arizona Republic.

All three have been captured, but their escape is likely to spur further discussion on how to classify inmates’ security risks and decide where to house them.

Both public and private prisons use the state’s classification system, but the Arizona Department of Corrections already has pulled some inmates from the Kingman facility as it rethinks how it assigns risk.

Arizona assigns inmates a number from one to five, with five representing the highest risk, based on their crimes. Depending on their score, inmates are assigned to one of four custody levels: minimum, medium, close and maximum.

Over time, an inmate’s classification can be adjusted up or down based on the inmate’s behavior in custody.

The system works when used properly, said Tom Rosazza, a consultant and former state corrections director. But the system can also mean that more violent offenders can wind up in less-secure facilities depending on their behavior.

Although they were in a medium-security facility at a private prison, McCluskey, Province and Renwick qualified as dangerous offenders. Renwick was a convicted murderer. Province killed a man in 1991 by stabbing him 51 times. McCluskey was sentenced in Arizona for attempted murder and had a previous armed-robbery conviction in Pennsylvania.

“My first thought was, ‘What the hell were those guys doing at that (Kingman) place?’ ” Rosazza said.

Their cases are not unique. There are more than 1,400 inmates serving time for murder in medium-security settings in Arizona, including 796 with life sentences. More than 100 were housed at the prison near Kingman, the only private facility in Arizona to house murderers.

Province entered the prison system with a maximum “five” rating when he reported to serve his life sentence in 1993 but was moved down to a “three,” or medium security, by 1997. Renwick followed a similar path through the system, while McCluskey entered custody as a medium-security inmate for firing a shotgun into a Mesa home in 2009.

Authorities allege the trio escaped with help from Casslyn Welch, McCluskey’s cousin and fiancee. The escapees are believed to have cut their way through a fence. Alarms were ignored because, according to state officials, prison guards thought they were false.

Renwick was recaptured Aug. 1 in Colorado after a shootout with police. Province was caught Aug. 9 in Wyoming. McCluskey and Welch were caught Thursday evening in Apache County and are suspected along with Province of being involved in the murder of an elderly couple in New Mexico shortly after the escape.

Because of the three inmates’ possible post-escape crimes, the classification issue likely will come up in any future lawsuits against the state or a prison operator, Rosazza said.

“That would be the first thing I’d look at,” he said.

Arizona officials control what factors are used in determining prisoner classifications and, based on those classifications, decide which facilities prisoners are held in. Although the former fugitives escaped from a private facility, the state will bear some liability in any court action because it is responsible for prisoners sentenced in Arizona.

“The state doesn’t contract away its responsibility,” Rosazza said.

The current classification system was put in place following a 1978 inmate escape and killing spree. In the wake of last month’s escape, there is discussion of making changes.

Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan last week said 148 inmates have been moved from the Kingman facility because of the escape. He cited a lack of confidence in the management there to house more violent and escape-prone offenders. The inmates remained at the same custody level when they were moved to different facilities.

jchev Arizona, Assessments and Classification

Curtis Ballard rides a motorized wheelchair around his prison ward, which happens to be the new assisted-living unit — a place of many windows and no visible steel bars — at Washington state’s Coyote Ridge Corrections Center. A stroke left Ballard unable to walk. He also has had a heart attack and underwent a procedure to remove skin cancer from his neck. At 77, he’s been in prison since 1993 for murder. He has 14 years left of his sentence. News from the Columbia Tribune.

Ballard is part of a national surge in elderly inmates whose medical expenses are straining cash-strapped states. They have officials looking for solutions, including early release, some possibly to nursing homes. Ballard said he is fine where he is.

“I’d be a burden on my kids,” the native Texan said. “I’d rather be a burden to these people.”

That burden is becoming greater. The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that elderly prisoners — the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, largely because of tough sentencing laws — are three times more expensive to incarcerate than younger inmates.

The ACLU estimates it costs about $72,000 to house an elderly inmate for a year, compared with $24,000 for a younger prisoner.

That’s not the case in Missouri’s correctional system, though. The per diem cost for medical and mental health care is the same for each offender in the system, said Jacqueline Lapine, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

The department contracts for medical care through Correctional Medical Services, which charges $9.90 a day per offender for health care and $2.34 a day per offender for mental health care, Lapine said. The cost is included in the average daily cost to house an offender in Missouri, which is $44.68, she said.

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that the number of men and women in state and federal prisons age 55 and older grew 76 percent between 1999 and 2008, the latest year available, from 43,300 to 76,400. The entire prison population grew 18 percent in that period.

“We’re reaping the fruits of bad public policy like ‘three strikes’ laws and other mandatory minimum sentencing laws,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C. “One in 11 prisoners is serving a life sentence.”

Washington has 2,495 inmates who are 50 or older, the state’s definition of elderly, according to information released after a public records request from The Associated Press. There are 270 inmates older than 65. The infirm started arriving at the new assisted-living facility at Coyote Ridge when it opened Feb. 1.

The unit has a capacity of 74 inmates. To qualify, an inmate must be disabled and be considered a minimum security risk, said Jeffrey Uttecht, prison superintendent.

The oldest inmate there is Ernest Tabor, 84, who was incarcerated for murder in 1997 and has 13 more years to serve. The average age in the assisted-living unit is 59, a figure skewed slightly by three inmates in their 30s with disabilities.

Nearly all the inmates in the assisted-living unit are in for murder or sex crimes, although a few are serving time for assault, drug or property crimes. Some were due to be released this year. Ballard is set for release in 2024.

The documents show the average age of a prison inmate in Washington has risen from 34.8 in 2000 to 37.3 in 2010. The average is rising because of longer sentences, not because older people are being sent to prison, the state said.

The assisted-living center is a unit in a much larger prison, which has two doctors for more than 2,000 total inmates. But the elderly prisoners tend to consume a big share of medical resources, including having two nurses assigned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, health care manager Mary Jo Currey said.

The assisted-living prisoners need walkers, wheelchairs and lots of medications. Some experts suggest infirm prisoners could be more cheaply cared for in conventional nursing homes, as people older than 50 rarely commit violent crime, Fathi said.

A visit to a prison ward for the elderly is an eye-opening experience, he said.

“Some were entirely bedridden,” he said. “It looked like a nursing home with razor wire.”

As of Wednesday, Missouri had more than 4,500 incarcerated offenders older than 50, Lapine said. Charles Barnes, who turns 83 next month, is the oldest serving an extended period of time. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 2008 and is serving a 10-year sentence.

Many states, including Missouri, are studying ways to reduce the number of elderly prisoners. The Aging Offender Management Team was created to identify a departmentwide solution to determine the best ways to handle needs of aging offenders and to reduce the need for long-term, prison-based care, Lapine said.

“When these offenders can no longer function in the general population, placement options are limited,” she said in an e-mail. Segregation beds are limited and not ideal, and infirmary beds are “a very limited resource,” Lapine said.

The committee made the following recommendations:

* Develop “enhanced care units” within Missouri prisons to provide appropriate health and housing services to offenders with special health needs.
* Keep better track of aging offenders’ daily activities to be used in conjunction with annual physicals.
* Develop a way to better identify the physiological age of offenders and their special needs.
* Develop an education campaign around the issue of aging prison populations.
* Train correctional staff to identify and meet the needs of a growing aging population.

New or expanded early release programs were adopted last year by 12 states and the District of Columbia.

But a study released in April by the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City found the laws have rarely been used, in part because of political considerations and complicated reviews.

Early release for infirm inmates would be fine with Uttecht, the Coyote Ridge superintendent. But those prisoners need to be able to pay for the nursing care they need, so it doesn’t happen often in Washington, he said.

“Usually it’s for a terminal-type illness,” he said.

Jane Parnell, who ran a special prison for the elderly in Yakima, Wash., that was closed last year because of high costs, said the public doesn’t want these inmates released.

“A lot of them are sex offenders and fairly violent offenders,” she said.

Parnell also questioned the necessity of the assisted-living center, saying it is “more unusual than I think it should be.” Many states just put elderly prisoners in the hospital ward, she said.

The assisted-living unit at Coyote Ridge is inside the fence of the regular prison but segregated from other units.

The building is one story and has wooden walls and wide doors to accommodate wheelchairs. There is a microwave oven, a shuffleboard table and a weight room in the common area.

Most inmates live in hospital ward style, with beds, desks and lockers. Sicker inmates have rooms with hospital beds.

Ballard lived much of his adult life in the Portland, Ore., area, where he worked on bridges, water towers and other tall structures.

His four kids bought his motorized wheelchair, an option not provided by the state. That allows him to work in the prison laundry, where he earns $52 a month. He doesn’t like the prison food and purchases many of his meals from the prison store.

Ballard declined to discuss why he was in prison, but records show he was convicted in 1993 of killing his estranged second wife and her adult daughter.

He also watches news, travel and cooking programs on a small television. He sometimes plays bluegrass music on his guitar. His room has a sink and toilet, and younger inmates are assigned to help him.

“Most will really help you,” Ballard said. “It’s not like in the movies, where there are a bunch of bullies out there.”

jchev Aging Population, Inmate Health Care, United States

Now just two steps away from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk, Chelsea’s Law could transform California’s approach to sex offenders through a balance of longer sentences, tougher parole conditions and targeted treatment. “We’ve stayed focused on the worst of the worst,” said Brent King, father of the slain Poway teenager whose name on the bill serves as a lasting memorial. News and additional key elements from Sign On San Diego.

Beyond the immediate policy change, the law could spawn a national movement driven by Chelsea’s parents to implement similar reforms in other states.

And its apparent success already has encouraged lawmakers to begin laying the groundwork for introducing legislation next year to attack an issue involving sex offenders: residency restrictions that have driven many into homelessness or underground.

But some experts express caution, noting that some past efforts to crack down on sex offenders — such as lifetime GPS tracking for those on parole — have fallen short.

“Overall, the intent of this legislation is laudable,” said professor Sheldon Zhang, the chairman of the sociology department at San Diego State University who specializes in criminology.

“Like so many other crime-fighting (measures),” he added, “politicians as well as the public may feel some vindication of their moral outrage, but rarely think through the consequences of passing a legal mandate without the necessary resources. Unenforced or unenforceable laws cause cynicism and public distrust of our legal and political system.”

The state Senate is expected to pass Chelsea’s Law in the coming days, moving it to the Assembly for a final vote next week. Schwarzenegger has vowed to sign it, likely at a ceremony in San Diego just after Labor Day.

When that day arrives, the Kings said they will appear with Schwarzenegger, feeling a measure of satisfaction knowing they have accomplished a goal to help prevent future tragedies. But it will not heal their broken hearts.

“One will be a feeling of immense pride and gratitude,” said Kelly King, Chelsea’s mother. “The other will be profound sadness and grief that we even got to this place.”

Added Brent King, “This is what she would have wanted.”

Chelsea, 17, was raped and murdered in February by convicted sex offender John Albert Gardner III who had violated parole numerous times. Gardner pleaded guilty to murdering Chelsea and Amber Dubois, 14, of Escondido. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But even before the confession, Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, R-San Diego, began pursuing reforms. Fletcher methodically crafted the bill and the Kings were consulted on each word. And, in an unusual but ultimately bill-saving move, Fletcher immediately approached the chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee. The personal meetings and weekend phone calls with Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, ultimately paid dividends.

Together, growing from adversaries to teammates, they negotiated the final deal that took Assembly Bill 1844 beyond penalties to include significant reforms and cost-cutting so the state could afford locking up more offenders for life.

“It’s a better bill than it was when it was introduced,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher said he was able to protect his priorities, mostly an automatic life-sentence without the possibility of parole for those convicted of serious violent sexual crimes against children. He also kept most penalty enhancements intact, including lifetime GPS monitoring for many parolees, while abandoning other smaller penalty increases to reduce costs.

Leno was able to secure parole changes, particularly a “containment model” approach that experts say will reduce recidivism by targeting the most dangerous with more scrutiny, polygraph tests and specialized treatment.

But there have been worries about adding to the state’s budget deficit. Precise numbers could not be determined, but one analysis suggested the bill would be “significant,” probably in the millions. The prison agency suggested that parole costs alone would increase $3 million per year.

In response, the legislation shifts to county jails hundreds of lower-level criminals not convicted of sex-related crimes. The savings could amount to $32 million a year starting in 2012. Fletcher also believes that the state will save money as fewer offenders strike again,

Leno explained the goal: “We wanted a bill to lock up the worst of the worst — to find a way to make room for them in our overcrowded prison system and implement (reforms) so we could effectively prevent these horrific crimes in the future. We did that.”

Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, endorsed the bill early and helped clear a path.

“They have put together a thoughtful, aggressive bill to correct systemic failures that led to a horrible tragedy,” Perez said.

The Kings say this is just the beginning. They are in the early stages of launching state-by-state campaigns to take Chelsea’s Law national, and are working with California’s two Democratic U.S. senators on a potential federal measure.

“I can hear Chelsea saying, ‘That was a great first step. Come on, let’s go,’ ” said Brent King, reflecting on the road ahead after her law is signed.

jchev California, Legislation, Sex Offenders

One of the many freedoms you lose when you go to jail is access to the internet. But now, some Washington state prison inmates are getting email. Kiosks have been installed at Stafford Creek, Coyote Ridge and Airway Heights Corrections Centers. EMessaging should be available at all Washington DOC facilities by the end of the year. Reported by NPR.

Dozens of email kiosks have been installed in three large prisons and the technology is scheduled to go statewide in Washington by the end of the year. Prisons director Dan Pacholke says electronic mail reduces smuggling threats and costs less to process and read than paper mail. The email software automatically flags danger words like “escape” or “weapon.”

Dan Pacholke: “I would say that e-mail is more secure in the sense that we can translate it from a foreign language to English. You can read the handwriting. It doesn’t lend itself to encryption. You can’t use meth soaked paper. You can’t put white powder in the envelope.”

Washington’s Department of Corrections is the first in the Northwest to install pay per e-mail kiosks. Meanwhile, letter writing is going out of style at dozens of county jails across the Northwest too. But there’s no high tech replacement. Those jails introduced a postcards-only rule to speed up mail screening and to inhibit smuggling. I’m Tom Banse in Olympia.

jchev Technology, Washington

Using federal and state funds, Madera County opened the Madera County Core Day Reporting Program on Aug. 9 for medium- to high-risk probationers released to community supervision. The Core Day Reporting Program includes an affordable and collaborative approach to holding offenders accountable when they are released to community supervision, classes to change criminal behavior, and links to other services in an effort to reduce costly recidivism and overcrowding at local and state facilities. Press release on PR Web.

The program is managed by the Madera Probation Department’s Adult Services Division. The department selected BI Incorporated, a national community corrections firm, to operate the Core Day Reporting Program. BI has worked with the county for years to supply electronic monitoring equipment and services, and BI operates day reporting programs throughout California. Officials say they selected BI because it has a good history working with the Probation Department and because BI operates similar day reporting programs successfully in other jurisdictions. The Probation Department has dedicated one officer to work collaboratively with the BI Case Manager to assist with the supervision and implementation of rehabilitative strategies to help probationers succeed in the Day Reporting Program.

A key component of the program is the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is administered by BI staff. In addition, BI oversees additional services through partner organizations in the community. Up to 30 probationers will participate in the program at one time, and each will move through three phases:

• An assessment and planning phase that includes reviewing criminogenic risk and needs and developing a behavior change plan for each participant.
• A treatment phase that includes weekly cognitive skills training classes that focus on changing criminal behavior, one-on-one case management, and referrals to community-based resources for issues such as substance abuse.
• An Aftercare component that includes relapse prevention elements, periodic check-ins with the case manager, and a long-term plan for succeeding in the community.

The program is located at 14241 Road 28 in Madera. Offenders attend this program for up to 180 days. Failure to comply with rules and guidelines of the program results in increased sanctions such as restricted curfews, additional classes, more frequent reporting, house arrest or re-incarceration.

Initial funding for this program is supplied by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Additional funding for the program comes from the California Community Corrections Performance Incentives Act of 2009, which encourages county probation departments to establish evidence-based programs—those proven to work in correctional settings—to reduce prison incarceration levels. The BI day reporting model includes use of Moral Reconation Therapy, a cognitive behavioral therapy program proven effective in more than 100 studies.

jchev CA Madera County, Community Corrections

City leaders rolled out the welcome wagon today for officials from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who are considering buying a shuttered local state prison to house federal inmates. The Standish Max Correctional Facility, which the state of Michigan closed last October in a budget-cutting move, was once considered as a home for prisoners currently housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those plans were dropped, but federal official are considering using the former state facility as a standard federal prison. News and additional photos in the Detroit Free Press.

About 350 people worked at the facility when the state ran it, though it’s unclear how many people would be needed to operate it as a federal prison.

City leaders, state prison officials and Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, led federal officials on a tour of the facility this morning, then drove them into town for a private lunch at a local golf club.

Along the route into town, a dozen or so freshly printed campaign-style yard signs read “Federal Bureau of Prisons — Welcome to Standish.”

“It was great to see the signs out there,” Stupak told reporters this afternoon outside the prison’s administration building. “It’s very early in the process, but right now everything looks very positive. I’m optimistic it will happen.”

Stupak noted that no recommendation had yet been made. Federal prison officials plan to meet privately with property owners surrounding the prison Wednesday to discuss what comes next.

Patricia Caruso, director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, said she hopes the federal officials will pursue the next step, which would be an environmental assessment of the property. She said the state’s inmate population has dropped from more than 50,000 to about 44,000, and the property is no longer needed. She said she can’t see any way the state would reopen the facility.

“We have no intention of doing that,” she said.

Some former workers at the facility protested outside the prison during the day, arguing that the state will need the facility again and that selling it now would be foolish.

“Is the sale of this going to balance Michigan’s budget?” asked Paul Piche, 53, of Omer, who has worked in state prisons for 25 years.

When the prison closed last year, Piche was transferred to another state prison in St. Louis, Mich., about 90 minutes away. He and 15 coworkers now ride to work together in a van, spending three hours a day on the road. Others in town are worried about the possible sale, too.

“My contention is that the prison will open sooner as a state facility than as a federal one,” said Dave Munson, a local bar owner.

He said he’d like to wait until a new governor comes in and reviews corrections policy before selling the property. But city leaders are convinced the facility’s days as a state prison are done.

“The state’s not going to open that back up,” said Clark Sanford, a longtime Standish city councilman who backs the plan. “What do you want to do, leave it empty?”

Standish city leaders say the entire community stands to benefit if the prison is reopened as a federal facility. Workers would spend money in the local community and the federal government would start paying for water and sewer at the prison. Local residents were socked with a 40% increase in water and sewer bills when the prison, the system’s largest user, closed and usage dropped off dramatically.

“If it happens, this will be a very positive thing,” said Mayor Mark Winslow.

jchev Federal Systems, Jail and Prison Construction, Michigan