The British Ministry of Justice has shortlisted seven consortia to compete on a £1.8bn framework to design, build and operate five new 1500-place prisons, according to the ContractJournal.

The seven lead consortia will now be invited by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to submit a tender for inclusion on the framework. The seven consortia are:

• G4S/Carillion
• GEO Group/Balfour Beatty
• Kalyx/Interserve
• Mitie/Laing O’Rourke
• Reliance/Bouygues
• Serco/Skanska
• Wates Construction

This news comes after Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw announced plans in April for the first two of five new 1,500 place prisons – one on the site of the former Runwell Secure Psychiatric Hospital in Essex and one at Beam Park West, Dagenham. All the new prisons in the building programme will be privately constructed and operated under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The aim is to create 7,500 new prison places. The duration of the PFI contracts awarded under this framework will range between 20 and 40 years.

jakking England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Jail and Prison Construction

A federal court panel responded sternly Wednesday to the state’s defiance of its order to reduce overcrowding in California’s prisons within two years, telling Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to submit a plan within 21 days that meets the panel’s goal of lowering the inmate population by 40,000 or face a court-imposed plan.  Reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The three-judge panel stopped short of holding Schwarzenegger in contempt of court, as requested by lawyers for prisoners who sued over their health care and mental health treatment. But the panel said it was “unaware of any excuse for the state’s failure to comply” and would view any further noncompliance “with the utmost seriousness.”

Schwarzenegger was unbending. “We continue to object to the panel’s arbitrary cap under a two-year timeline and are continuing our appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Rachel Arrezola, a spokeswoman for the governor. The state’s appeal argues that federal courts have no authority to order a reduction in the prison population.

The panel ruled in August that overcrowding in the state’s 33 prisons – now filled to nearly twice their designed capacity of 80,000 – was the main reason that health care for inmates violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A judge appointed a receiver to manage the health system in 2006 after finding that substandard care was killing one inmate per week. The court gave Schwarzenegger until Sept. 18 to present a plan that would reduce the population from 150,000 to 110,000 over two years, saying it could be done safely by such measures as sending low-risk inmates to county custody and treatment, and halting imprisonment for minor parole violations.

The governor had already proposed measures he said would lower the inmate population by 37,000 in two years. But after the state Assembly spurned all proposals to release inmates early, Schwarzenegger presented a plan to the court that would remove fewer than 20,000 prisoners in two years, and would take five years – and passage of previously rejected legislation – to come close to the court’s population goal. The plan includes extending a current program to transfer some inmates to other states, releasing some sick and elderly inmates to home detention, reclassifying some felony theft crimes as misdemeanors and increasing prison construction.

The court rejected the plan Wednesday and said it was running out of patience. State officials have had ample time to propose changes that would bring the prisons up to constitutional standards, the panel said, and if they again fail to comply, the court “will be left with no alternative but to develop a plan independently and order it implemented forthwith.” The panel members are U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson of San Francisco and Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

jakking California, Overcrowding

Utah’s prison population is nearing its capacity of some 6,700 inmates and a hoped-for release valve won’t be available, the head of the prison system warned legislators Tuesday. Story from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Tom Patterson, executive director of the Utah Department of Corrections, said the ranks of the incarcerated are growing by a net of 21 inmates a month. The prison system currently is 71 male inmates under its operating capacity — which is 95 percent of its total number of beds — and 40 female inmates below that system’s capacity, he said. “We’ll hit that fairly soon, again, with no plan for future inmates,” Patterson told lawmakers.

A 300-bed center intended to house inmates who violate their parole, which was postponed last session, may now be on hold indefinitely, as the company that had been hired to build the center has told the department it can no longer construct the facility. The prison system also lost a planned 192-bed expansion in Gunnison, a 40-bed transition facility and an 80-bed diagnostic center. Patterson said the department has taken a series of steps that have kept down its incarceration rates, which typically rise during an economic downturn. “We could be in a world of hurt” otherwise, he said. But Patterson said he remains upbeat about the department and his staff’s willingness to persevere.

jakking Overcrowding, Utah

Two prison governors, the British equivalent to Wardens, have been charged with gross misconduct after vulnerable prisoners were tidied away before their jails were inspected, it is revealed in Prison Service reports.  Reported by the Epoch Times.

Dame Anne Owers, chief inspector of prisons, states that Nick Leader at Pentonville and Ian Mulholland at Wandsworth transfered prisoners who were at risk of self-harm between the prisons they governed in May and June this year. Six transfers were made from Pentonvville to Wandsworth in May and returned immediately after the inspecters left. In June five men were transferd from Wandsworth to Pentonville also misssing the inspecters. Three other senior managers are named by Phil Wheatley, director general of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) as facing disciplinary action.

A report says the transfers were “completely pointless, irresposnsible and potentially dangerous.” Two prisoners from Wandsworth tried to kill themselves, one making four attempts shortly after arriving at Pentonville. Inspectors were told no transfers would happen but returned to Pentonville after a tip-off. Harry Fletcher of the probation union Nappo said what happened “could set matters back decades”. Both governors had been considered progressive …

Both govenors have been moved to other posts – Mr Mulholland is head of custody in Wales, Mr Leader is in charge of Whitemoor Prison in Cambridgeshire. They have two weeks to respond.

jakking England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL

Inmates at a prison in Uruguay can spend years in “tin cans” — small metal boxes where temperatures rise to 140 degrees F (60 degrees C), while women and children were among prisoners in Nigeria confined to a “torture room.” Those were among the abuses chronicled in a report released on Tuesday by Manfred Nowak, an Austrian human rights lawyer and U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other forms of cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment. Report from the Washington Post.

Speaking to reporters after submitting his report to the U.N. General Assembly, Nowak said he focused on “forgotten prisons” and the treatment of children in the dozens of countries he visited. Nowak said women and children in Lagos, Nigeria, were among the more than 100 detainees confined to the “torture room” of the Criminal Investigation Department, where torture methods included the firing of gunshots into legs and leaving the severely injured prisoners without medical treatment.

There are some 10 million people behind bars worldwide, most of them in unacceptable circumstances, Nowak said. “My guess is that the clear majority of them have to be in conditions that are violating human dignity,” he said. One widespread problem is overcrowding, which Nowak said he witnessed during visits to countries like Georgia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Togo. In Indonesia and Paraguay, he said, detainees were not only deprived of food and medicine but were sometimes forced to pay a daily fee for their “accommodation” in prison cells. Nowak’s report said he found a woman on death row in a prison in the former Soviet republic of Georgia who had been confined to a bed for years because she was paralyzed.

Some governments responded positively to Nowak’s reports of torture and abusive conditions in their prisons. He said Uruguay was taking steps to shut down the “tin cans,” which he said were an unacceptable form of incarceration. Jordan closed a prison where Nowak found cases of torture, while Nigeria has promised to do the same with the “torture room” in Lagos.

Nowak said torture was commonplace across the Arab world, although he said most Arab countries refused to let him visit their prisons and detention centers. Jordan did allow Nowak access to its jails. Although Nowak did find cases of torture in Jordan, he said it was not systematic.

He said roughly 1 million of the world’s 10 million detainees were children, some as young as 9 or 10 years old. During prolonged periods of pretrial detention, many are not segregated from adult prisoners, leaving them open to abuse. In countries like Indonesia, Togo and Uruguay, Nowak’s report said he found that corporal punishment was being used to discipline child detainees. In Uruguay, he found boys locked up for 22 hours a day with no toilets.

jakking Africa, Americas, INTERNATIONAL, Indonesia, Jordan, Middle East, Nepal, Nigeria, Overcrowding, Sri Lanka, Togo, Uruguay

Missouri’s prison population has reached an all-time high, and state officials are trying to figure out why.  Story from the Columbia Tribune.

After declining or holding steady for the previous few years, the inmate population has been rising during the past year and a half, according to figures provided yesterday to The Associated Press by the Department of Corrections.   At the end of September, the department had 30,720 inmates — topping the previous high mark of 30,654 set in October 2005. That was down slightly to 30,708 yesterday. Department Director George Lombardi said the increase is a result of new people being sentenced to prison, not because of probation revocations for prior offenders. “There’s a lot of new commitments that are coming our way,” Lombardi said. But “we’re still trying to analyze exactly where that is, how it is, what the cause is.” It’s unclear whether more people are committing crimes, more people are being convicted or courts are clearing out a backlog of cases, he said.

After peaking four years ago, Missouri’s prison population dipped to 29,788 in September 2007 and remained around that mark until March 2008. Since then, it has risen by 3 percent. Steady growth in prison populations was the norm for several decades in Missouri as lawmakers passed increasingly tough sentencing laws. But that slowed after a 2003 Missouri law lowered the maximum prison sentence for some felonies, including drug possession, and gave judges greater discretion to order treatment programs or short-term shock sentences. The Department of Corrections also has placed a greater emphasis on programs that prepare soon-to-be-released offenders to re-enter society, resulting in a decline in the recidivism rate for parolees.

After opening nine prisons between 1994 and 2004, the state closed the 1,000-bed Central Missouri Correctional Center in June 2005 because of budget cuts. That prison remains closed, and Lombardi said there are no immediate plans to reopen it despite the recent growth in the inmate population.

jakking Missouri, Overcrowding

From a feature article in the New York Times:

Allen Jacobs lived hard for his 50 years, and when his liver finally shut down he faced the kind of death he did not want. On a recent afternoon Mr. Jacobs lay in a hospital bed staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyes sunk in his skull, his skin lusterless. A volunteer hospice worker, Wensley Roberts, ran a wet sponge over Mr. Jacobs’s dry lips, encouraging him to drink.   “Come on, Mr. Jacobs,” he said.

Mr. Roberts is one of a dozen inmates at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility who volunteer to sit with fellow prisoners in the last six months of their lives. More than 3,000 prisoners a year die of natural causes in correctional facilities.  Mr. Roberts recalled a day when Mr. Jacobs, then more coherent, had started crying. Mr. Roberts held his patient and tried to console him. Then their experience took a turn unique to their setting, the medical ward of a maximum security prison. Mr. Roberts said he told Mr. Jacobs to “man up.” Mr. Jacobs, serving two to four years for passing forged checks, cursed at him, telling him, “‘I don’t want to die in jail. Do you want to die in jail?’  “I said no,” said Mr. Roberts, who is serving eight years for robbery. “He said, ‘Then stop telling me to man up,’ and he started crying. And then he said that I’m his family.”

American prisons are home to a growing geriatric population, with one-third of all inmates expected to be over 50 by next year. As courts have handed down longer sentences and tightened parole, about 75 prisons have started hospice programs, half of them using inmate volunteers, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson, died last month in hospice at the Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla after being denied compassionate release.

Joan Smith, deputy superintendent of health services at the Coxsackie prison, said the hospice program here initially met with resistance from prison guards. “They were very resentful about people in prison for horrendous crimes getting better medical care than their families,” including round-the-clock companionship in their final days, Ms. Smith said.  The guards have come to accept the program, she said. But still there are challenges unique to the prison setting. Some dying patients, for example, divert their pain medication to their volunteer aides or other patients, who use it or sell it, said Kathleen Allan, the director of nursing. She added that patients can be made victims easily, “and this is a predatory system.”   But she said the inmate volunteers bond with the patients in a way that staff members cannot, taking on “the touchy-feely thing” that may be inappropriate between inmates and prison workers.

At Coxsackie, 130 miles north of New York City, administrators started the hospice program in 1996 in response to the AIDS epidemic using an outside hospice agency, then changed to inmate volunteers in 2001. The change saved money and was well-received by the patients.   Perhaps more significant, said William Lape, the superintendent, was the effect the program had on the volunteers. “I think it’s turned their life around,” Mr. Lape said.

John Henson, 30, was one of the first volunteers. When he was 18, Mr. Henson broke into the home of a former employer and, in the course of a robbery, beat the man to death with a baseball bat. When he entered prison, with a sentence of 25 years to life, he said, “I thought my life was over.” At Coxsackie he met the Rev. J. Edward Lewis, who persuaded him to volunteer in 2001. “You go in thinking that you’re going to help somebody,” Mr. Lewis said, “and every time they end up helping you.”

Before hospice, Mr. Henson said he had given little thought to the consequences of his crime. Then he found himself locked in a hospital room with another inmate, holding the man’s hand as his breathing slowed toward a stop. Like many men in prison, the dying man had alienated his family members, who rejected his efforts to renew contact. In the end, he had only Mr. Henson for companionship. When the prison nurse declared the man dead, Mr. Henson broke down in tears. “They just came out,” he said. “I don’t even know why I was crying. Partly because of him, partly because of things that died within me at the same time.”   Mr. Henson, dressed in prison greens and with his blond hair buzzed short, spoke directly and without hesitation. “I was just thinking about why I’m in here and the person’s life that I took,” he said. “And sitting with this person for the first time and actually seeing death firsthand, being right there, my hand in his hand, watching him take his last breath, just caused me to say, ‘Wow, who the hell are you? Who were you to do this to somebody else?’ ”

Ms. Allan, the nursing director at Coxsackie, said that with a number of inmate volunteers, “You can identify in each of these guys something inside them driving them to do this. It’s a desire to redeem themselves, so even when it gets hard they’re able to plow through it. “  She added, “I think Mr. Henson made me a better mother.”

Benny Lee, 38, has spent half his life in prison for manslaughter, and for most of that time, he said, “the only thing I regretted was getting caught.” Four months ago he began as a hospice volunteer, feeling he needed a change. “I’m trying to offer some payback,” he said.   On a recent afternoon, Mr. Lee was scheduled to sit with Eddie Jones, 89, who was dying from multiple causes. Mr. Jones, who was convicted of murder at age 70, said, “I can talk with them better than staff members, because staff members have their minds made up about how things should be.”    Mr. Lee said he does not know how Mr. Jones’s death will affect him. “I’m hoping it will have an effect, period,” he said. “Growing up and in prison, I put up walls. But I have to be more emotionally receptive to these guys. This is going against everything I’ve tried to do. But I realize it’s a change I have to make.”

Mr. Lee said hospice was forcing him to learn to trust people. “It’s helping me mature,” he said. “My views of life and death are changing. I was unsympathetic when it comes to death. I’ve had friends die, and I was callous about it. Now I can’t do that. I’ve come to identify with these guys, not because we’re inmates, but because we’re human beings. What they’re going through, I’ll go through.”

jakking Aging Population, Inmate Health Care, New York

Closure of Washington State Penitentiary’s main institution is among the top options identified in a draft report on ways to cut hundreds of beds in the Department of Corrections.  Reported by the Walla Walla Union Bulletin.

Released Wednesday by the state Office of Financial Management, the feasibility study recommends closing the old main institution as well as Ahtanum View Corrections Center in Yakima and half of the Larch Corrections Center in Yacolt. Three close-custody or medium-custody units at the penitentiary could also be shut down if changes are made to state sentencing policy, the study said.   This option would cut 1,653 beds, the study said. The prison’s new west complex expansion, intensive management units, minimum security unit and administration buildings would not be affected.  The main institution has 852 funded medium-security beds. It also houses the prison’s correctional industries that provide vocational training, a kitchen facility that feeds about 1,000 prisoners, the steam plant, a health-care unit, engineering department and administrative service.

An optional recommendation in the study is to downsize, but not close, the McNeil Island Corrections Center to a minimum security facility, close the Ahtanum facility and all of the Larch Corrections Center and as in the first option, shutter two close-custody or medium-custody units at the penitentiary if changes can be made to sentencing policy.  This option would cut 1,618 beds, the study said.

The closures are intended to help find $12 million in savings in the statewide Department of Corrections budget, which totals nearly $1.8 billion for the current 2009-2011 biennium. That figure is about a $130 million reduction, or 6.7 percent, from the previous two-year period, DOC spokesman Chad Lewis told the Seattle Times in October.

Although the report’s authors said closure of the main institution was their top recommendation, they said that was on the condition that $41 million in capital funding is appropriated to build a medium-security unit and a close-custody unit at the penitentiary and expand the kitchen in the new west complex to compensate for closure of the main institution’s kitchen facilities. If the capital dollars are not available to make the improvements, the consultants recommended downsizing McNeil Island accompanied by a six-year closure of half the Larch Corrections facility. The closure of the Ahtanum facility would require the 100 elderly and medically fragile inmates there to be transferred to a minimum-security unit at the Monroe Corrections Complex, the study said.

OFM Deputy Communications Director Kate Lykins Brown emphasized that what was released Wednesday is only the first draft of the study and the final recommendations will depend on data which will be included in the final report that is due out on the first of November.   “We don’t have all the data,” she said Wednesday. “When the final report is ready, we’ll have the data so we’ll be better able to see whether the data support the recommendations.”

jakking Economic Issues, Washington

The Vermont Department of Corrections will see the greatest number of layoffs and job cuts under the Douglas administration’s plan to achieve $7.4 million in labor savings this budget year. From the Burlington Free Press.

In the coming weeks, 14 people will lose their jobs and 20 other positions will be eliminated permanently in Corrections. The number of jobs in Corrections had already shrunk by 101 in earlier rounds of job cuts beginning in 2008. The department will have 1,044 authorized positions after this round of cuts, including 44 open slots that could be filled.   “This cut is the first real impact on community services,” said Commissioner Andrew Pallito, referring to probation and parole programs. He said he tried to steer clear of frontline positions where possible. He didn’t cut any uniformed staff who work in prisons.

The Douglas administration says fewer layoffs are needed — 29 instead of the 37 announced last week — because more vacant and retirement slots will be eliminated. The administration will eliminate 82.5 jobs newly vacated by retiring workers and 46.5 slots that have been vacant.

jakking Budgets, Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Personnel Issues, Vermont

Faulty projections about how much money the prisoner early-release plan could save may force Colorado DOC to consider other budget-cutting measures, including slashing corrections programs and staff, officials say.  Reported by the Denver Post.

“It doesn’t appear to be working,” said state Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, referring to Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to cut $19 million from the budget by releasing thousands of prisoners on parole up to six months early. “Their assumptions were bad, or something.” Lambert, a member of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said the issue should be addressed when the committee meets in November and December. JBC chairwoman Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge, said the state may have to go back and make more cuts … “This isn’t something we necessarily want to do,” Keller said. “We have to make hard choices.”

The proposal to slash $19 million from the Colorado Department of Correction’s budget this year is tied directly to the number of inmates released early. State officials estimated that over the two years of the program, 8,003 inmates will be eligible for early release. They initially projected that the parole board would deny 20 percent of the early-release cases, leaving about 6,400 who could be released. But Parole Board chairman David Michaud said the board has rejected about 80 percent, including 149 sex offenders. If that rate continues, 1,600 inmates would get early releases in two years. “I’m sure there would be an impact on savings,” DOC spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said.

The early-release initiative, announced Aug. 18, is part of a plan to fill a $318 million state budget gap. Sanguinetti said the DOC will now look at other cost-cutting options. “It would be up to the governor’s office.” Lambert said the DOC may be able to find cost savings in other parts of its budget without putting the safety of residents in jeopardy … Lambert said the DOC could reduce the budget by cutting staff, sending inmates to less costly private prisons or cutting programs. “We have some serious questions we need to ask them about this.” Michaud said other options for the DOC to save money include granting early parole to hundreds of illegal immigrants and to prisoners who also have been convicted of crimes in other states. The illegal immigrants could then be deported and the dual offenders could be sent to the other states to begin serving sentences there, he said. “Are there other avenues for savings?” Michaud said. “I think so.”

jakking Colorado, Early Release, Economic Issues

State officials have informed union members that Ohio’s prison system plans to lay off 41 employees and eliminate 118 vacant positions.  Story from Fox8.

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction also plans to close Camp Reams, Ohio’s first prisoner “boot camp.” Officers now working at the facility located at the Southeastern Correctional Institution in Lancaster will be reassigned. Additionally, one inmate unit will be closed at the Pickaway Correctional Institution in Orient in central Ohio.

The cuts, taking effect Feb. 27, are expected to save $16 million as the prison system works to cut its two-year budget by $87.2 million.

jakking Budgets, Economic Issues, Ohio

The Czech government on Monday approved Justice Minister Daniela Kovarova’s project of the introduction of house arrest and electronic monitoring system to prevent a possible collapse of the Czech prison service, lower its costs and protect society against repeat criminals.  Story from Prague Monitor.

The possibility of house arrest is embedded in the new Penal Code that will take effect as of January 2010. The Justice Ministry says house arrest should be an alternative to prison sentence for less serious crimes, for instance, minor thefts, and it is to replace the current alternative punishment in the form of community works.

The ministry’s new plan is divided into three phases. The first phase starts when the house arrest punishment takes effect and continues until the introduction of the electronic monitoring of convicts via a special tether with a sensor. At the same time a monitoring device sending information on the convicts’ movement to the central system should be installed in their homes. The project is to decrease the number of prisoners within the first phase already.

The ministry also plans to raise the number of employees in the Probation and Mediation Service by 90 people in connection with the project. The service is to select convicts suitable for house arrest and provide their random checks.

The second phase of the project follows up to the introduction of electronic monitoring of convicts and the completion of changes to respective laws. The Justice Ministry wants to apply for EU subsidies for this phase. In such a case the state would cover only 30 percent of the costs and save some 111 million crowns.

Within the third phase, planned in 2011-2013, house arrest and the electronic monitoring system would be interconnected in judiciary practice.

There are 35 prisons in the ten-million Czech Republic and all of them are overcrowded. A total of 22,000 inmates were in Czech prisons in July and another 7500 convicts were sent to prison but they did not start serving their sentences yet.

jakking Community Corrections, Electronic Monitoring, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Overcrowding

A Michigan corrections official has been appointed warden of the Maine State Prison in Warren, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune.

Patricia Barnhart, acting warden of the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, Mich., is expected to take over as warden in the high-security Maine prison in early December. She will become the first female warden of an all-male prison facility in Maine.
Barnhart succeeds Warden Jeff Merrill, who will lead the state Corrections Department’s energy conservation efforts. Corrections Commissioner Marty Magnusson says Barnhart has more than 20 years of experience in corrections and will bring progressive leadership to prison. Maine State Prison has a capacity for 916 prisoners.

jakking Maine

A Chief Probation Officer role will be created to oversee a revamp of the New Zealand Community Probation Service (CPS). Report from NZPA.

The CPS, which oversees those on community based sentences, will now focus on an offender’s risk to the community and will measure success against clear outcomes. The changes were recommended by the Probation Expert Panel. The panel was recommended by the State Services Commissioner after an Auditor-General’s report identified significant shortcomings with CPS.

Panel chairwoman Paula Rebstock said CPS was “manual driven” with books on procedures parole officers should follow in different circumstances. The system had become complex and it was difficult to write a plan for every possible occurrence, Ms Rebstock told Parliament’s law and order select committee today. “It’s difficult to write rules and procedures for how to achieve public safety.” Rather the risk of an offender to the public needed to be the target of any activity, she said. The level and type of risk was likely to change over time. A clear focus for the service needed to be established with measurable outcomes, Ms Rebstock said. Having measurable expectations and measuring staff against them made it “possible for staff (and management) to be responsible”.

The current system meant managers were checking actions against a set of procedures rather than looking at what had happened. “To hold someone accountable you must be clear about what you are trying to do.” A chief probation officer would be able to independently review whether outcomes were meet if something went wrong and would also be part of efforts for ongoing improvement, Ms Rebstock said … Corrections Minister Judith Collins said the expert panel had found “significant improvements” and a “fundamental rethink”. “The panel has already helped CPS undertake changes which have improved outcomes, but we need to ensure this improvement continues.” The chief probation officer would report directly to the chief executive, would provide additional professional leadership for staff and investigate following a major incident.

jakking Australasia, Community Corrections, INTERNATIONAL, New Zealand

State Prisoners in Oregon will have to make do without soda pop, according to KGW8.com

The state Department of Corrections announced Tuesday that it would remove soda from meal service to prisoners, effective Dec. 31, according to Michael F. Gower, a corrections administrator. In May, a tax watchdog group gave the department its “Golden Fleece Award” for wasting taxpayer money after learning that nearly $775,000 was spent on soda pop for prisoners between 2007 and 2009.

The primary reasons for this change are cost and health benefits. … Soda will be available for purchase by staff and inmates and we are working to add additional beverage items on the Commissary,” Gower said. Prisoners will now enjoy tea at meal time, a healthier option that’s “calorie free and provides nutrients and compounds shown to provide numerous health benefits,” Gower added. The state hopes the move will also lower health costs but did not offer further specifics on a long-range health regimen for prisoners.

jakking Food Services, Oregon

Counties across West Virginia are warming to community corrections, in part because it costs them between $5 to $15 per offender per day, compared to $49.25 for each day in a regional jail, legislators learned Tuesday.  Article from the Charleston Gazette.

“There are significant savings to sending people to community corrections as opposed to sending them to jail,” said Norb Federspiel, director of the Division of Criminal Justice Service. “My personal opinion is, the counties have been the chief beneficiaries” of community corrections, he told a legislative interim committee.

Since the Legislature passed the Community Corrections Act in 2001, 40 counties are participating in community corrections programs, primarily through day reporting centers, Federspiel said. At any given time, between 1,200 and 1,500 nonviolent offenders are in community corrections programs, saving counties about $50,000 a day in regional jail costs. “There’s no doubt that it has saved counties money to have people sentenced to day report centers instead of jails for misdemeanor offenses,” Federspiel told the interim committee on regional jails and corrections.

While West Virginia’s program is too new to provide solid data on outcomes, he said community corrections in other states have reported recidivism rates that are 40 percent lower than for incarcerated inmates. Offenders in West Virginia community corrections must complete community service assignments, undergo counseling and participate in assigned programs based on their needs. Programs include substance abuse treatment, job training, adult basic education, anger management and life skills courses. Federspiel said drug rehabilitation is a critical factor, since a significant percentage of all nonviolent offenders have been convicted either of drug offenses, or for property crimes committed in order to buy drugs. Not everyone sentenced to community corrections is up to the challenge, he told lawmakers. “There are some who’ve said, ‘This is too tough. Put me in prison,” he said.

One of the key recommendations this summer in the report of Governor’s Commission on Prison Overcrowding is to expand capacities of community corrections programs statewide. Currently, the state spends just more than $5 million a year on community corrections, with about $1.8 million coming from the state’s half of a $10 community corrections court fee imposed on all convictions other than parking tickets. In recent years, an additional $3.5 million a year has been appropriated from general revenue funds, he said. The funds are distributed to counties as grants, with counties required to put up 10 percent to 30 percent of the amount in matching funds.

Asked why 15 counties are not participating, Federspiel said most are small, rural counties that may not have significant crime problems. In some counties, he added, some circuit judges simply oppose the concept of community corrections. “Some judges philosophically don’t believe in community corrections. They believe offenders should go to jail,” he said.

jakking Community Corrections, Economic Issues, Recidivism, Regional Jail System, Regional Jails, West Virginia

Arkansas prison inmates would be able to receive – but not send – e-mails, possibly with photographs attached, under a proposal being considered by the Board of Corrections today.  Report from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Under the pilot project proposed by the state Department of Correction, people who pay a small fee would be able to send electronic messages to inmates at the Grimes and McPherson units in Newport. Correction Department employees would print out the messages and screen them before delivering them to the inmates. At least initially, inmates who wanted to respond would have to do so the old-fashioned way, with a letter sent through the U.S. Postal Service. But the department is also exploring the possibility of adding the capability for inmates to send e-mails that would be screened by corrections officers before they go out.

Correction Department spokesman Dina Tyler said the system could help improve security by creating an electronic record of inmates’ correspondence and reducing the volume of traditional mail that must be checked for contraband, such as drugs or cash hidden in envelopes. It could also help inmates keep in touch with their loved ones outside prison walls, she said. “It is difficult enough to come to prison, but to come to prison without any contact with your family is heads and shoulders more difficult,” Tyler said. “Plus, if they maintain good ties with their family, when they go back home, they won’t be as likely to re-offend.”

At its meeting at the Southwest Arkansas Community Corrections Center in Texarkana today, the Corrections Board will vote on whether to solicit proposals from companies to set up the system as a pilot project at the two prisons. The company selected will be responsible for all of the costs, including providing the equipment and establishing an Internet connection via a satellite link. In exchange, the company will be able to charge senders a small fee, which the department hopes to keep at or under the price of a first-class postage stamp, which is now 44 cents. The system would flag “buzzwords,” such as words related to contraband smuggling or other illicit activity, helping corrections officers to identify suspicious messages, said Sheila Sharp, the department’s assistant director for administrative services. The system would also screen for vulgarity, pornography and other prohibited content.

If the project is successful, it could be expanded to other prisons, Sharp said. Eventually, the department could also set up electronic kiosks where inmates could read and send emails that would be screened by corrections officers before they are sent out. The kiosks could also allow inmates access to other information, such as the amount of money in their accounts and the time remaining on their sentences. “We’re just in the visionary stages on that,” Sharp said. Because of security concerns, Arkansas inmates do not have access to the Internet and can use computers only for certain purposes, such as class work, Tyler said.

Several other states already have e-mail systems for inmates, as do many federal prisons. In Texas, senders pay 44 cents per page and an additional 44 cents for each attachment. As with the system Arkansas is considering, inmates receive printouts of the e-mails and cannot send e-mails in response …

Jean Thrash, chief executive officer of the Arkansas chapter of Citizens United For The Rehabilitation Of Errants, said the system sounds like a good idea, as long as the fees are low. Her group has pushed for years to lower the fees Arkansas inmates must pay to make phone calls. Currently, the fee for a 15-minute call is $4.80 for a call to a number in Arkansas and $10.70 for a call to an out-of-state number. “There will be those family members that do have computers, and it would be a less expensive way for them to communicate, certainly,” Thrash said. “Off the top of my head, I don’t see a downside to it.”

jakking Arkansas, Inmate Mail

Colorado State Rep. Glenn Vaad said he was stunned when he learned that the Colorado Department of Corrections planned to leave a new, $208 million maximum-security prison empty because of the state’s budget crisis.  Story from CBS4Denver.

“That’s unconscionable in my mind. We invested $208 million of the taxpayers’ money and because of the economic downturn, we can’t afford to open it,” he said. “Let’s sell it.” Vaad, R-Mead, said the state would have to change state law to allow a private prison to buy or lease the prison because state law bars private companies from housing maximum security prisoners. If lawmakers reject that option, Vaad said it should be sold off and run privately as a medium security prison allowed under current law.

Although the state is currently in a budget crisis and opening the prison has been put on hold, Sen. Moe Keller, who heads the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, state attorney general John Suthers and corrections director Ari Zavaras have all come out against Vaad’s plan, saying it’s too dangerous. “I would not approve of allowing the private sector to operate maximum security prisons in the state of Colorado,” said Suthers, a Republican. “If you look around the country, placing maximum security detention into private hands has not gone well.” Keller, a Democrat from Wheat Ridge, said the state has already had serious problems with medium security private prisons and allowing the private operation of a maximum security prison is out of the question. “I’m vehemently opposed to selling a maximum security prison to a private company,” Keller said. However, Keller said she might be open to selling the building to a private company if some other use can be found …

Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Democrat from Pueblo West who represents state prison workers in her district, said the new building is one of eight prisons inside a barbed-wire compound in Canon City and she said it should be run as a prison, but she’s against private prisons because she believes they are a security risk. McFadyen said the state cannot leave the building empty because security for the old maximum security prison is being moved to the new facility.

Zavaras said he believes Colorado lawmakers will do the right thing and eventually open the new prison. “The budget crisis is unprecedented; however, our need for high custody beds is important to manage our prison population,” Zavaras said.

The old facility, the Colorado State Penitentiary now known as Centennial, has 756 beds and as of Sept. 30, was near capacity with 749 inmates. Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said there are already unfilled beds in other private prisons. She said the real demand is for maximum security, although the state doesn’t know how many beds it will need. She said some potentially dangerous maximum security inmates are now housed in county jails, but the state has no way of knowing how many there are because they have not been evaluated and they won’t be classified until they can enter the state system.

Last January, Gov. Bill Ritter said the state should delay opening the new prison by one year, along with a new diagnostic center to July 2010, saving $2.7 million. He also announced the closure of the 210-bed Colorado Women’s Correctional Facility in Canon City effective May 31, saving $5.2 million, eliminating 71 jobs and requiring the transfer and double-bunking of inmates at other facilities. And that was before state lawmakers learned they will have to cut another $240 million from this year’s $19.1 billion budget by June 30.

Keller said that means everything is on the table, including the sale of state buildings. She said it also means that the prison will probably remain closed for the forseeable future. Vaad said the state could reap other savings as well if the building is turned over to a private company. He said it costs the state as much as $77 a day to house one prisoner, and private companies are already doing the job for $52 a day. “We have a budget crisis. I think we use that money for other needs,” he said.

jakking Budgets, Colorado, Economic Issues, Jail and Prison Construction

Kittitas County WA officials are considering increasing what they charge local cities to put prisoners into county jail as the result of significantly rising incarceration costs.    County Sheriff Gene Dana said the Sheriff’s Office also is looking for ways to help the cities reduce the number of people they must put in jail with a possible expansion of the electronic home monitoring program.  Reported by the Daily Record.

Dana said the major increasing cost is the shipping of more and more prisoners to jails in other counties and cities as the local inmate population rises. In August 2009 alone, it cost the county around $80,000 to transport and keep prisoners in Chelan, Okanogan and Ferry counties and in the city of Sunnyside jail. “If you do the math we’re pushing up to about $1 million a year just to ship out prisoners,” Dana said. Dana on Friday said an updated projection puts year-end costs to send prisoners elsewhere in 2009 at around $800,000.

That money is coming from “banked” funds generated by a one-tenth of 1 percent local sales tax designated to be put away for improving the county’s criminal detention facilities. The tax was approved in the mid 1990s and is also used to send juvenile offenders to a facility in Yakima County. “We have been counting on those funds to help support improving and expanding our local jail,” Dana said. “That’s money we could be spending locally on a better jail.” At the rate the county is spending to ship inmates out, Dana believes the cost could reach a point where it is exceeding the revenue coming in from the sales tax.

Dana said the county bills the cities of Ellensburg, Kittitas, Cle Elum, Roslyn and South Cle Elum quarterly for jail services. The bill is based on the number of inmates the cities brought in the year before, plus about a 2 percent increase. The cost to house a prisoner in the county jail, Dana said, averages about $50 a day. He said the county’s daily inmate population runs from 120 to 130 if all prisoners are counted at the out-of-county facilities. The overcrowded and aging county jail has been modified to safely hold around 85 inmates, Dana said. “Our costs have risen and most of the entities are now bringing us more prisoners than were expected,” Dana said. “We’re seeing a real increase, especially from the state patrol.”

The challenge, Dana said, is that the Washington State Patrol and other state agencies by law don’t have to pay to put prisoners in the county jail, including Central Washington University police and the state Fish and Wildlife Department. State government officials contend the state supplies benefits that offset that cost, including free use of the state crime lab and toxicology lab, to name a few. Yet right now, the state patrol’s prisoners make up more than 50 percent of the inmate population. The long-term hope is that the state Legislature will act to change the law to give county jails more funding.

Dana said some of the immediate options are to increase the quarterly bills to each of the cities, or begin charging a higher fee based on the actual number of prisoners and for each day they stay in the jail. The sheriff said his office and the corrections staff want to work with county judges to consider how to expand the number of prisoners who go home for “incarceration” with electronic monitoring, thus reducing the inmate population. A challenge, Dana said, is that more than 50 percent of the inmates have residences located outside the county. “That makes it pretty hard to monitor them electronically,” Dana said. “We’re looking at ways to, somehow, keep tabs on them in other counties.” County commissioners, Sheriff’s Office officials and representatives of local cities are set to meet Nov. 4 to discuss the situation. “We want to work with the cities and brainstorm how we can reduce all our costs,” Dana said.

jakking County-City Issues, County-State Issues, Economic Issues, Electronic Monitoring, Overcrowding, WA Kittitas County

The leaders of state agencies in Iowa are looking for ways to cut 10% of their budget.   Governor Culver ordered the across-the-board cut Thursday to trim roughly $600 million in state government spending between now and June 30th. Via Radio Iowa.

Iowa Department of Corrections spokesperson Fred Scaletta says the order will force DOC Director John Baldwin to find nearly $40 million in savings. We have talked with the wardens and district directors and asked them to submit their ideas and plans for how they may cut that,” Scaletta said. “Because it’s across-the-board, every piece of our agency that has an itemized budget will be responsible for reducing 10%. So, that includes all of our judicial districts, community corrections and the institutions.”

Funding for Iowa’s nine prisons and eight community corrections agencies represents about 6% of the state’s budget. Scaletta says the DOC, like many state agencies, took steps earlier this year to cut back on spending. Those steps include a hiring freeze, cutting back on travel and investigating possible savings on prescription drugs. However, Scaletta says the size of the budget cut will certainly force Director Baldwin to consider layoffs. “Anywhere between 75 to 80% of the institution’s budgets are salaries and in community based corrections it’s even a little bit higher than that, so…we’re going to struggle here a little bit,” Scaletta said. Governor Culver said Thursday that he will try to backfill money for certain areas of public safety.

The Governor ordered the budget reduction after a three-member panel of financial experts reduced their estimate of state tax collections for the year by $415 million.

jakking Budgets, Economic Issues, Iowa