Alaska Legislators are cringing at the cost of the planned new jumbo state prison in the Matanuska-Susita Borough and want to look at turning it into a private prison.
State representatives are also reluctant to pony up an additional $20 million the Palin administration has requested for the $240 million project. Enthusiasm for the project isn’t what it used to be before oil prices plummeted, dragging state revenues down with them. Fairbanks Republican Rep. Mike Kelly took over the corrections budget in the state House this year and said that — if he could — he would slow the project down. But the bonds for construction have already been sold. That’s left lawmakers with few options. One is to privatize operations of the prison when it opens …
Private prisons have been hugely controversial in Alaska. “They’ve figured prominently into a lot of the problems we’ve had,” said Eagle River Republican Rep. Bill Stoltze, an influential supporter of keeping the project in state hands. The ongoing federal corruption investigation, which has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas from 12 lawmakers, lobbyists and others, began with inquiry into a push to build a private prison in the state …
Political battles over private prisons in Alaska kept the state’s jail-building efforts on hold for a decade. In the meantime, the lack of space in Alaska’s correctional system has the state sending hundreds of Alaska prisoners to a private prison in Arizona …The prison fight appeared to be over after Senate President Lyda Green, who is now retired, pushed through the new state prison to be built in her home area of the Mat-Su. The planned Goose Creek Correctional Center, about nine miles north of Point Mackenzie, will be the largest prison in Alaska at 1,536 beds. The Mat-Su Borough sold the $240 million in construction bonds for it earlier this year. The state is to lease the prison for 25 years, covering the borough’s bond payments …
Corrections officials are asked to report back with their findings on privatization by next spring. State corrections officials have never been big fans of privatizing their work. Deputy Corrections Commissioner Dwayne Peeples said officials haven’t come up with a position on the potential of privatizing the Mat-Su prison. But he said any savings would “probably be fairly marginal.”
There is a great deal more background in the article in the Anchorage Daily News.
vericatrajkova Alaska, Economic Issues, Private Prisons
Alaska DOC’s new prison is one step closer to becoming a reality.
The governor, borough manager, borough mayor and the Department of Corrections were on hand Tuesday to sign the new prison contract before building the Goose Creek Correctional Center. The facility will cost about $240 million. Construction begins this March. Once it’s finished, the goal is to bring all Alaska prisoners back from Arizona to be housed at the facility.
There’s a misconception that corrections departments exist to incarcerate people, and we don’t,” said Joe Schmidt, the Department of Corrections commissioner. “We exist to protect the public, and we do that in several different ways. If you look at our mission statement you’ll see we provide secure confinement for those that are actively dangerous, that the community is truly afraid of — not mad at, but afraid of.”
The new prison is medium security and is expected to be finished around 2012, as reported by KTUU.
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The Bureau of Justice Statistics has just released the 2005 Census of Federal and State Correctional Facilities. The document has a wealth of data across all States, including the numbers of privately-operated facilities.
The document can be accessed from the Basic Stats list at the top right sidebar.
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- Lisa Holley, Chair of the Rhode Island Parole Board, has been awarded the Ben Baer Award by the Association of Paroling Authorities International (APAI) [RIDOC press release]
- Two legislators have called for an audit of the Alaska DOC, citing “unhealthy and unsafe” conditions for inmates and officers.
- Kent County MI considers renewing jail improvement tax for another three years.
vericatrajkova Alaska, MI Kent County, Probation and Parole, Rhode Island
Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt has taken the opportunity of the year end to review the state of Alaska’s prisons and jails.
Overcrowding has been a headache at the Anchorage jail for years. Being the place where those arrested in Alaska’s largest city are first processed and where some end up serving their time, the facility on Fourth Avenue east of downtown is on the front lines of a statewide problem: a burgeoning prison population that is expected only to grow. This has the head of Alaska’s prison system, Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt, on a mission: Build more prisons and reduce the staggering number of prisoners — three out of five — who are released but end up back in jail for a new crime. To do this, he wants to change how Alaska looks at its prisons. He wants to move the system from a punitive one where people just do their time, waiting for their release date, to one of rehabilitation.He plans on asking the state government for an additional $3 million to pay for in-prison programs, some of which were cut under the previous administration.
Schmidt notes that prison increases have followed more police enforcement.
We always support more police officers, I’ve always said that, but everyone has to realize there’s another cost to it. It’s more than just the wages and the police car; it’s the backup system, which is us.
Alaska solves much of its overcrowding issues by shipping roughly one in five inmates to the lower 48.
“Having Arizona as a release valve is a healthy thing,” Schmidt said. His vision of reshaping the department means about 100 of Alaska’s worst offenders will be kept in the Southwest. “When we have someone doing 200 years or 400 years, they’re never going to re-enter, and I don’t mean to sound like we’ve given up on them, but those folks we’re not trying to program and fix for society because they’re never going to be back in society,” he said.
There is a lot more interesting detail in the Anchorage Daily News.
vericatrajkova Alaska, Overcrowding, Re-Entry
The Alaska RFP for Inmate Telephone service has been amended. The decision about whether or not Nick Mackay will become Mecklenburg County Sheriff has still not been made.
vericatrajkova Alaska, Inmate Telephones, NC Mecklenburg County, North Carolina