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

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

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

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

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

Officials in Franklin County say the state has yet to pay some of its increased costs because of a dramatic expansion of the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell. Adding more than a 1,000 inmates to the state facility has driven up the county’s costs for its court system, among other things. Reported in the Seattle PI.

Coyote Ridge started as a 600-bed minimum security prison but now has nearly 2,000 inmates. By the end of the year, it’s expected to reach its capacity of more than 2,600 inmates.

Franklin County Prosecutor Steve Lowe compared it to adding another city, and said it’s important for the state, not just county taxpayers, to share in costs.

“The reality is Franklin County has gotten nothing,” Lowe said.

Despite the state budget deficit, Franklin County will ask the Legislature in the next session for impact fees, county commissioner Bob Koch said.

A joint study by the county and Connell in 2008 estimated the county’s one-time costs at $2.5 million, including staff and equipment for departments dealing with criminal justice, Koch said. There are also extra costs to local schools and hospitals.

But no money made it through the Legislature, officials said.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Rowlanda Cawthon said only the Legislature has the power to appropriate such money.

County officials don’t yet have a firm estimate of additional costs from the prison expansion. But they include an increase in court filings and paperwork. Prisoners have filed lawsuits against the state and prison employees, and those must be handled in Franklin County courts.

Lowe said there has also been an increase in criminal cases from the prison, which are investigated by Connell police. When Coyote Ridge was a minimum-security prison, his office received one to three prison-related criminal cases a year, usually escape or drug cases.

Lowe said his office has 10 cases on hold from Coyote Ridge, most of which are assaults.

County Clerk Michael Killian said letters from inmates come into his office daily, and his staff has to respond to inquiries for legal help and forms. Killian estimated the workload related to inmates amounts to a full day for a clerk every week.

jchev Economic Issues, Jail and Prison Construction, WA Franklin County

Coyote Ridge Corrections Center is the first prison campus to meet national standards for its green and energy-saving practices, officials say. The Connell prison received a LEED Gold certification Tuesday for the green-building techniques and energy-saving measures incorporated in the 2008 prison expansion. Story in the News Tribune.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the U.S. Green Building Council’s green-building standard. Gold is the second highest rating a project can receive. Coyote Ridge is the first prison in the world where the entire campus has met the LEED standard, said David Jansen, Department of Corrections capital programs administrator.

Sustainability is a part of every day at Coyote Ridge, said Jeff Uttecht, Coyote Ridge superintendent. Where some facilities have grass, Coyote Ridge has gravel.

The prison also uses low-flow fixtures such as 1.5-gallons-per-minute showers and 1.1-gallons-per-flush toilets, according to information from DOC. Using less water decreases Coyote Ridge’s demand on Connell’s aquifer, said Glenn Jones, Coyote Ridge facility manager.

The prison’s laundry system also reuses the heat and some water, he said. And Coyote Ridge’s recycling program cuts the facility’s amount of garbage in half, Jones said.

Jansen said the department is impressed with the facility’s performance so far. DOC has the goal of being a national leader in sustainability. The state Legislature mandated that Coyote Ridge meet LEED Silver standards, Jansen said.

“We did better than we hoped,” he said.

The recent prison expansion added a 2,048-bed medium security section to the 600-bed minimum security facility.

The prison had 46 percent of its building materials come from recycled sources, reduced water use by 32 percent and used 45 percent locally-made building materials, according to information provided by DOC. The facility also has solar panels.

And of the 27,500 tons of material removed from the site during construction, 160 tons ended up in a landfill. Jansen said the rest was recycled. Sustainable buildings save money, which is important now when resources are becoming scarce, said Eldon Vail, DOC secretary.

Building the prison to LEED standards did not add to the overall cost, Jansen said. Receiving the LEED rating does require a fee to the building council, but that was offset by energy rebates, he said.

The state also will benefit long-term from reduced utility costs because of decreased use of water, sewer, natural gas and electricity, Jansen said.

Coyote Ridge will use about 20 million fewer gallons of water and produce about 70 million fewer gallons of sewage per year than a similar-size prison, Jansen said.

The exact energy savings at Coyote Ridge is uncertain because all the units aren’t open yet, Jansen said. The department estimates it will have a 32 percent reduction in energy use when compared to a similar-size facility. Coyote Ridge had 1,937 inmates on Tuesday, Uttecht said.

The facility has been gaining new prisoners since the state decided to transfer inmates to the newly expanded prison while closing portions of older prisons to save money. The state also brought back prisoners to Washington who were being held in other states.

Four units have opened since the beginning of the year to accommodate new prisoners, Uttecht has said. Two more units are expected to be open before the end of the year, which would put the prison close to its maximum of 2,468 prisoners. One of the remaining two empty units will open Aug. 16.

But on Tuesday, prison officials were focused on celebrating their new award. A light bulb illuminates the LEED Gold certification glass plaque.

jchev Environment and Energy, WA Franklin County

An effort to reduce interactions between incarcerated gang members has led to a decrease in violence at Washington state’s prisons, corrections officials said Tuesday. Violent infractions declined statewide by about 5 percent in each of the past two years, said Department of Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis. At individual prisons, the decrease has been as significant as 20 percent. Reported in the Seattle PI.

Prison administrators credit several changes in recent years, including reducing the number of rival gang members who are housed in the same living units.

Lewis said that in 2008, the department started identifying gang-affiliated inmates at the men’s reception center in Shelton before deciding where to place them.

Corrections officials said that gang members are responsible for 45 percent of incidents of violence, even though they only make up 20 percent of the prison population.

Deputy Prisons Director Dan Pacholke said there was an escalation of violence throughout 2007, including an increase in group attacks against one or two people at a time. That trend led the department to reassess its strategy on how to prevent such attacks, he said.

“There’s no quick fix, there’s no magic cure, but it’s definitely going in the right direction,” Pacholke said.

Lewis said other factors, such as increased focus on in-prison chemical dependency and education programs, increased visits from family members, and the department’s recent rule to allow inmates to e-mail family members, has helped reduce problems.

“If you just get one or two visits per year you are significantly less likely to commit a violent infraction,” he said. “They have hope, they have a reason to want to do good.”

Lewis said that since most prisoners will eventually be released, it’s a matter of public safety.

“The more we can reduce violence in prison, hopefully the more we can reduce violence outside prison,” he said.

Only one prison has seen a slight increase in violence recently: the Washington Corrections Center for Women.

Pacholke said the increase at the women’s prison is due in part to the influx of new inmates after the closure of another women’s prison because of state budget cuts. Pacholke said that the increase was minor, jumping from one violent incident in April to five, and that most of the incidents involved fighting.

jchev Inmate Assaults, Washington

The city of Oak Harbor may soon be in the business of importing prisoners from off island. Oak Harbor Police Chief Rick Wallace brought a contract before the City Council Tuesday that, if approved, would allow the Oak Harbor jail to begin receiving inmates from Anacortes on a daily basis. News from the Whidbey News Times.

The contract with the city of Anacortes proposes to house inmates at a cost of $65 per day. Despite some good-natured grumbling from City Council member Bob Severns, who joked that the price should be higher as Anacortes is raising the rate it charges Oak Harbor for its water, no council members had a problem with the contract.

The move is in response to a review City Prosecutor Bill Hawkins and Lt. Tim Sterkel of the Oak Harbor Police Department conducted earlier this year. It concluded that the jail could be run more efficiently if it was fuller, as the 12-bed facility is usually occupied with just six or seven prisoners.

“They are quite expensive to run,” Wallace said.

The Oak Harbor jail is split into two cell blocks, four beds in one cell for women and eight beds in three cells for men. It has an annual budget of about $600,000. That includes the wages and benefits of the seven jail officers that work in the facility.

It comes down to dollars and cents, Wallace said. Making a meal for six inmates costs about the same as it does to prepare a meal for 10. Plus, the $65-per-day prisoner fee will be a revenue generator for the city, although it will not be much.

“We’re not going to break even or pay for our jail expenses,” Wallace said.

He declined to speculate on how much the deal may generate per year due to the fluctuation of inmate numbers. However, if the jail were to receive an additional four inmates per day at $65 each, that would generate $94,900 annually.

According to Capt. John Small of the Anacortes Police Department, while they may transfer as many as four inmates on any given day, no inmates may be transferred on another. He also could not say what kind of revenue Oak Harbor could expect, but that it would much less than $94,900 a year.

“That’s almost as much as our entire jail budget,” he said.

Anacortes sends the majority of its inmates to the Skagit County jail in Mount Vernon. The facility has 183 beds but suffers constantly from overcrowding. The average inmate count is between 200 and 250 prisoners. Overcrowding is a problem in facilities across the state, he said.

Wallace is aware of the problem and is also considering inmate transfer contracts with San Juan County and the Washington Department of Corrections. He didn’t have details about those contacts, such as average prisoner intake, but he said the Oak Harbor facility could house up to 15 prisoners, despite having just 12 beds.

Although Wallace acknowledged that the additional inmates would “add stress” to both prisoners and guards, he said his staff has the proper training and he is confident they can handle the load.

The contract with Anacortes will not receive final approval until it is signed by Mayor Jim Slowik, who was on vacation Tuesday evening. Wallace said he hopes it will be signed before the end of the month and that the jail can begin receiving the additional prisoners by the beginning of July.

jchev Economic Issues, Washington

Spokane County commissioners are still exploring options as they prepare to take final testimony on proposed jail sites. A public hearing Wednesday will focus on a study that says, if cost didn’t matter, the county courthouse campus is the best site for a new jail to replace the Geiger Corrections Center. Reported in The Spokesman-Review.

The second- and third-best sites would be undeveloped land in Airway Heights, next to Spokane County Raceway Park, and near the Medical Lake interchange of Interstate 90, according to consultants.

Integrus Architecture and Jim Kolva Associates say construction would cost more at the courthouse site, in large measure because it would require a $21.3 million parking garage.

Commissioners heard several possibilities last week for satisfying the parking needs without a garage, but there was no silver bullet.

The three-level, 712-space parking garage would be on county land across Broadway Avenue from the courthouse and the Public Works Building. Two small office buildings would be demolished, and occupants would be transferred to other county quarters.

Jail operating costs would be lower at the courthouse site because duplicated services and transportation costs would be eliminated. Also, there would be better access to courts, attorneys and other important services.

But the undeveloped sites offer more flexibility for future expansion. It could be enlarged one 256-bed “pod” at a time, possibly without additional bond measures.

Wherever the new jail is built, an integral part of the project is a separate, 256-bed community corrections center where day-release inmates would receive classes, counseling and treatment.

Until last week, the “essential public facilities” site evaluation assumed the community corrections center would be near the new jail. But sheriff’s Lt. Mike Sparber, the project manager, suggested it might be better to build the community corrections center on the courthouse campus regardless of where the new jail is located.

That raised a legal question: Does the county site-selection ordinance for jails and other unpopular facilities allow commissioners to use two of the recommended sites?

Although the community corrections center by itself would require only 49 parking spaces, plans call for it to be built on a 263-space parking lot.

Another possibility that emerged last week was purchase of the privately owned Monroe Court office building for the community corrections center. The building at 901 N. Monroe St. adjoins the courthouse campus but is outside the “essential public facilities” study area.

Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor Jim Emacio said the county might be able to use the building without another six-month, $70,000 study if the city of Spokane and surrounding property owners agreed.

However, he said that would be risky because people who formally opposed the courthouse site – including much of the downtown business establishment – might have standing for a lawsuit.

Officials also were looking into the possibility of shoehorning the community corrections center into a space next to the proposed jail tower, saving 263 parking spaces.

The Monroe Court building would not only save those spaces but add 170.

Don Coon, the county’s design and construction manager, says the Monroe Court building also would provide an entire floor of surplus space – about 26,000 square feet – that could be rented out or used for county offices.

Allowing 50 parking places for the surplus office space and 49 for the community corrections center, the 170-space Monroe Court parking lot would offset all but 210 of the extra spaces needed for the jail project.

Rough estimates are that the building would cost $11 million to $13 million and would require $11.7 million worth of renovation.

The cost would be about the same as a parking garage, and there still wouldn’t be enough spaces to meet the city of Spokane’s minimum requirement.

Coon said the county might purchase vacant land at the western edge of the courthouse campus for a 110-space parking lot. He estimated purchase and development cost at $1.1 million.

jchev Jail and Prison Construction, WA Spokane County

Lt. Ben Silverman of the Lebanon Police Department holds one of the frozen dinners that will be fed to inmates at the Lebanon jail.

Inmates at the new Lebanon jail will eat three meals a day prepared by inmates from the Washington State Department of Corrections, according to police Chief Mike Healy. Reported in the Albany Dem0crat-Herald.

Healy and Lt. Ben Silverman informed the city council about the meal plan during a recent tour of the six-cell, 12-bed facility.

The new $10 million, 30,000-square-foot Justice Center opened last summer. Inmates so far have been short-term holds, Healy said, but the jail is starting to accept longer-term inmates, from 30 days up to one year.

The meals are purchased from the Airway Heights correctional facility near Spokane. In addition to serving the nutritional needs of Washington state inmates, the factory also sells products to 45 jails in Oregon, Washington and Montana.

More than 200 inmates work at the facility that produces 4,000 to 6,000 TV dinner-like frozen meals per day. The program started in the mid-1990s, according to Danielle Wiles, a spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Corrections.

Wiles said the program generates more than $2 million per year for the system.

Opening the door of a large upright freezer, Healy revealed stacks of frozen meals. The meals are nutritionally balanced and total no more than 2,400 calories per day.

Healy said the goal is to feed the inmates, not fatten them.

“We will supplement the dinners with fresh fruit and dairy,” Healy said.

The meals are purchased in three-month supplies. They are heated in a microwave oven.

Healy said the department will be able to feed inmates for about $5 each per day. Other company’s meal plans cost as much as $8 per day. At the city’s old jail, TV dinners were bought in bulk, Healy said.

A breakfast with scrambled eggs as the entree costs $1.60, while cold cereal costs just 72 cents per serving.

For lunch, a roast beef sandwich box meal costs $1.80 and a turkey sandwich meal is $1.55.

Supper entrees are more substantial, such as salisbury steak at $1.78, or fish and chips at $1.70.

“These are the same type and quality of sandwiches that are sold in many convenience stores and at some casinos,” Healy said.

The Linn County Jail contracts with a private company called Aramark to provide meals to inmates. Aramark staff members operate the jail’s kitchen, and meals cost about $1.50 each, according to Capt. Barry Baggett.

jchev Inmate Programs, Washington

The head of the state prison system wants to make sure Washington has more control over which out-of-state felons are allowed into the state. Story from KOMO News.

On Thursday those in charge of interstate movement of felons gathered in Olympia to discuss possible changes.

State Department of Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail called for tighter oversight and more accountability in the wake of the killings of four Lakewood officers by Maurice Clemmons, a felon from Arkansas.

Clemmons, who served time in an Arkansas prison, was relocated to Washington under an interstate compact that allows felons from one state to be supervised by the corrections department in another.

“I think in honor of those folks who were tragically murdered, we’re looking for solutions to prevent the next Maurice Clemmons,” Vail said.

Washington corrections officers told the compact that they want more say over who comes here, as well as the ability to return them to their home state.

“We might, in some cases, say, ‘Nope, this person you want to send here is too dangerous. We don’t want to supervise them and refuse to take them.’ I’d like to see that happen,” said Rep. Al O’Brien.

As it stands now, the state can’t send a felon like Clemmons back to the state where he served time.

“That’s not what the rules allow,” said Vail. “The rules are complicated; they’re cumbersome. We think they need to be more streamlined and simple.”

With the next meeting of the interstate compact not scheduled until next year, there was a sense of urgency at Thursday’s meeting.

“It’s like a treaty. You’ve got 50 states and every body is at the table and we don’t want to wait for that table to come together again in 2011,” Vail said. “We want to do something faster than that.”

Despite spiked anxiety, there were no final decisions made at the meeting; however, Vail hopes the meeting leads to action, and soon.

The state of Washington currently has a ban on receiving new felons from Arkansas.

jchev Arkansas, Washington

When Snohomish County last year moved supervision of its jail from the county executive’s office to the sheriff’s office, not everybody was convinced the change would help morale or save taxpayers’ money. Reported by HeraldNet.

Initial feedback points to some dramatic improvements during the past year, including huge drops in mandatory overtime, sick leave and worker grievances.

Undersheriff Tom Davis said the sheriff’s office has focused on building relationships with corrections bureau employees and law-enforcement agencies who pay to house inmates in the jail.

“If we focus on the relationships, other efficiencies will start to fall into place,” Davis said. “We’re never done, but we’re very pleased with where we are after 12 months. We still have a lot to accomplish.”

The jail has an annual budget of about $39 million and employs 341 people. It locked up about 25,500 inmates last year from 19 Snohomish County municipalities, the state and other outside agencies. In January, it had an average daily population of 1,161.

Councilman Mike Cooper in September 2008 proposed taking the Corrections Department away from County Executive Aaron Reardon’s office, citing considerable cost overruns at the jail.

That fall, a majority of the council voted to make jail operations part of Sheriff John Lovick’s job, starting Jan. 1, 2009.

Council Chairman Dave Gossett voted to move the jail, but worried the council was acting too quickly. The past year has dispelled those initial doubts, he said.

“I think it’s been going very well. I’ve been very impressed with the job that Sheriff Lovick has done,” he said. “There are two key issues. One is better labor relations. Two is a better control over overtime.”

Last week, Reardon said he advocated moving the jail for years before the council acted, and that it was “an idea that I pushed for a very long time.”

In a Nov. 6, 2008, memo to the County Council, Reardon urged delay.

“Rather than making this precipitous move at this time, I urge the council to take a step back and to engage in a thoughtful analysis of the ramifications of such a decision,” he wrote. “Until and unless such an analysis is done, I cannot support this action.”

The county’s Department of Corrections had been part of the executive’s office since the 1980s. Before that, it had belonged to the sheriff, which is the arrangement in most of Washington’s 39 counties.

Snohomish County moved the jail away from the sheriff because problems there led to civil rights lawsuits. Still, the jail remained a source of legal trouble.

Former jail director Steve Thompson was hired in 2003 when the Corrections Department became the focus of repeated criminal investigations and soaring overtime bills.

He initially was greeted with support by corrections officers, but during his tenure became the subject of dozens of labor complaints filed by the Snohomish County Corrections Guild. A majority of those complaints were dismissed by arbitrators.

Thompson opposed transferring his department to Lovick’s care.

At the time, Thompson said the County Council made the change to take a jab at Reardon and predicted Lovick would face the same labor headaches.

So far, that hasn’t been the case.

“Overall, we’re very happy with the sheriff’s office management,” guild president Andy Pierce said. “It’s just a new attitude. The difference is they value their people, they value their employees. It’s just a more respectful and honest attitude.”

Under the new administration, employee concerns have been handled at the “lowest possible level,” Pierce said. Two employees who filed wrongful termination grievances related to the previous administration received $50,000 each last year, he said.

The jail also is the subject of two pending lawsuits in which female employees allege being sexually harassed by male supervisors before the sheriff’s office took over.

Corrections Bureau Chief Mark Baird said lowering overtime by a third has boosted morale and improved finances. A key component was lowering mandatory overtime shifts by 93 percent. There were 30 mandatory shifts in 2009 compared to 411 the year before.

The number of worker grievances fell more than 76 percent, he said. There were 27 in 2009 compared to 114 in 2008. Sick leave dropped about 6 percent during the same period.

The drop in overtime saved taxpayers $1.35 million, Administrative Bureau Chief Rob Beidler said. In 2009, the jail also brought in an extra $2 million in revenue — about $12.8 million in 2009 compared to $10.8 million in 2008.

That happened through signing outside contracts with places such as Skagit County and the city of Kirkland to keep the beds full, as well as supplying services such as work crews, he said.

“Keeping the beds full is the best thing for Snohomish County’s general fund,” Beidler said. “Not just for the sheriff’s office, but for the general fund.”

Councilman Brian Sullivan said having the sheriff run the jail is saving the county millions of dollars.

“I would say that the transition has been 100 percent positive,” he said. “I can attribute that to the sheriff and his staff.”

jchev Personnel Issues, WA Snohomish County

Phillip Damon Arnold drunkenly hit three Lakewood police cars during a chase that ended with two bullets in his shoulder and another in his cheek. It also ended with the taxpayers of Lakewood becoming the financial caretakers of Arnold’s medical treatment. The city’s reward for capturing him without injuring bystanders: a hospital bill of $138,000. News reported in The News Tribune.

On Sept. 26, 2008, Arnold drove his Chevy Blazer toward a police officer, who responded with gunfire, according to police reports obtained by The News Tribune.

The bullets hit the Lakewood resident but didn’t stop him. Police eventually pinned his vehicle on Gravelly Lake Drive Southwest and wrestled a bloody Arnold out of the front seat. He was arrested and taken to Tacoma General Hospital for treatment of his wounds.

Arnold was convicted 11 months later of felony harassment, attempting to elude a police vehicle and three counts of first-degree malicious mischief. He was sentenced to almost three years at McNeil Island Corrections Center. A review board deemed the shots fired by police to be justifiable.

Even so, the city was on the hook for Arnold’s hospital stay, which included surgery and other care. Lakewood leaders say his care actually cost more than $138,000, but the hospital offered a negotiated rate.

The city paid the bill last fall, and City Manager Andrew Neiditz notified the City Council in an Oct. 6 e-mail that was obtained by The News Tribune. Similar incidents have played out across Washington since the state Attorney General’s Office issued a controversial opinion on jail costs in 2005.

The attorney general placed the burden of inmates who need medical care before they are booked into jail on the agencies that arrest them, as long as the inmates have no insurance or otherwise cannot afford medical treatment.

The U.S. Supreme Court had previously ruled that people behind bars have a right to health care. It also ruled that whoever has custody of a convicted inmate – a county government or the state – must pay for that care.

But up until 2005, it was unclear who was responsible for the medical bills of people who are wounded or injured during the arrest or before being booked into jail. Since then, cities including Lakewood have had to shell out thousands of dollars.

“It’s been a big pain and cost to the cities,” said Jim Doherty, legal consultant for Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington. “It’s the hot potato. None of the agencies want to be responsible.”

COSTLY CARE
The hot potato has landed in the hands of various jurisdictions across Washington.

• In Tacoma, the city paid about $115,000 for health care for people arrested in 2008, almost all of which involved a man who had been shot, according to deputy city attorney Michael Smith, legal advisor to the police department.
• In Orting, Police Chief Bill Drake said the department had a nearly $72,000 medical bill for someone it arrested in 2008. The city negotiated a reduced price, but for a department with an annual jail budget of about $30,000, it still took a hit, he said.
• In Sequim, a man who eventually pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend in a motel room was diagnosed with cancer shortly after his arrest. The city had budgeted $75,000 for all inmate medical costs for the entire year. But his chemotherapy treatments had cost the city about $37,000 by 2005, according to News Tribune files. The man later died.

“It does become an issue when these bills become substantial,” said Drake, the Orting chief. “It can be substantial for smaller cities.”

WHO’S RESPONSIBLE DEPENDS ON THE CRIME
Pierce County charges a daily fee of $80 per inmate to the agencies that use its jail – a fee that includes medical, dental and mental health services for felons.

But before an arrested person is allowed into jail in the first place, a nurse determines whether he or she is “stable enough to be cared for in a stabilized environment,” said deputy prosecutor Craig Adams, legal advisor to the Sheriff’s Department.

If he’s not, then the arresting agency must pay for the care that will make the alleged criminal healthy enough for jail.

Later, if an inmate is convicted of a felony, the county continues to cover health care costs – or the state does, if the person is sent to a state prison. If the person is arrested or convicted of a misdemeanor, medical care is the city’s responsibility.

Meanwhile, the cost of medical services at the jail continues to climb – even as county leaders have lowered the overall corrections budget.

Pierce County budgeted $3.6 million for medical services related to the jail in 2003. This year, it budgeted $6.2 million.

The jail provided 73,932 sick calls to inmates in 2009, 1,000 more than the previous year. It budgeted almost $441,000 to cover drug supplies for inmates this year, more than $25,000 above 2009.

Corrections Chief Martha Karr cited a number of factors for the rising costs.

“We’re getting older, less healthy inmates,” she said. “We have to treat them.”

“We are seeing offenders with significant medical issues,” she added. “When individuals are arrested, they may not have seen a doctor or dentist in years. Unlike in our community, while they are incarcerated, they have a constitutional right to health care.”

LACK OF INSURANCE
Hospitals first try to charge the medical insurance provider of the person arrested. The problem, city officials say, is that many of these people don’t carry insurance.

There have been efforts to implement reforms to help cities. The Association of Washington Cities has discussed everything from jurisdictions pooling money to lobbying the state to help with extraordinary bills. But no law has been passed to provide assistance to local governments.

The state Department of Corrections can release low-risk inmates who have costly medical conditions under electronic monitoring if their release is expected to save the state money.

In Arnold’s case, he didn’t have insurance coverage for the wounds he sustained during the chase.

According to police reports, officers initially stopped him because of improper lane travel in the 5400 block of 100th Street Southwest. Arnold wouldn’t follow the officer’s directions and sped off.

Eventually police cornered him in a parking lot at the 9100 block of Bridgeport Way Southwest, where he rammed two of their patrol cars, sped away again and got stuck on a fence, police records state.

Three officers got out of their cars to confront him, according to the records; that’s when he put his car in reverse, got unstuck from the fence and headed toward the officers. One officer fired three shots.

Arnold’s SUV was eventually pinned again and he was pulled, wounded, from the vehicle on Gravelly Lake Drive.

He already had a criminal history of burglary, theft and possession of stolen property.

EXTENSIVE CARE
Lakewood wouldn’t disclose what treatment the $138,000 paid for, but police reports indicate Arnold was in bad shape and needed extensive medical care.

“The suspect was covered in blood and was bleeding from the jaw,” one officer wrote in his report.

“When I told Arnold to get out of the car he replied, ‘No! You guys already shot my teeth out!’” wrote another officer. “At this point I noticed Arnold’s mouth had been injured and his shirt was covered in small white chunks of material that could have been teeth.”

Officer Ronald Owens guarded him on Sept. 26, 2008, hours after the chase. (Owens was one of the four Lakewood officers fatally shot by Maurice Clemmons in a Parkland coffee shop two months ago.)

“I could smell an overwhelming odor of intoxicants emitting from the room,” Owens wrote in his report. “I observed Arnold lying on a backboard. He was covered up with blankets. Arnold’s right side of his face was extremely swollen. He had on a clear plastic mask that covered his mouth and nose. He was in a ‘C collar’ and there was blood on him.”

The officer who shot Arnold was placed on paid administrative leave, which is standard procedure in officer-involved shootings.

In November 2008, the department’s review board unanimously ruled the shooting was “lawful and within LPD policy,” and the matter was closed, according to documents.

Today, Arnold is 31 years old and is serving a 33-month sentence at McNeil Island. He is scheduled for release in 2011.

SOLUTION DIFFICULT TO SEE
The $138,000 was the most Lakewood has paid for an inmate’s care. It has paid for other inmates’ treatments, but they amounted to a few hundred dollars each.

City Manager Andrew Neiditz said the money for Arnold’s care did not come out of the police budget; it was taken from the city’s operating budget, which in 2009 was $38 million.

Lakewood City Councilman Don Anderson said it’s unfortunate that inmates’ medical bills are an extra financial burden on local governments.

But Anderson said he doesn’t foresee reform soon, because any option will require the use of public dollars. Where the cost falls legally – city, county or state – is almost accidental, he said.

“I honestly don’t know a way around it,” he said.

jchev Inmate Health Care, Washington

Two state leaders say they’ll ask that the U.S. Supreme Court review a federal court decision clearing the way for inmate voting in Washington. News reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Following Tuesday’s decision by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel revoking the state prohibition on felon voting, Attorney General Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed now say they’ll ask the nation’s highest court to review the decision.

The decision, hailed as a landmark win for prisoner-rights advocates, effectively removed the state’s restrictions on felon voting on civil-rights grounds.

Under the Washington law at issue, citizens convicted of a felony lose the right to vote until they are released from custody and off of Department of Corrections supervision. The 2-1 ruling by a Circuit Court of Appeals panel put those restrictions in doubt, with the majority finding that the state restrictions unfairly penalize minorities.

In an announcement Wednesday afternoon, McKenna and Reed said they believe the issue is ripe for review by the Supreme Court, and that their agencies — defendants in the lawsuit alongside the governor’s office — will ask for such a hearing. Objecting to the appeals court decision, both noted circuit courts elsewhere in the nation have come to the opposite conclusion while reviewing similar cases.

“This case began back in 1996, it’s been to the 9th Circuit twice already and now it’s time for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in to resolve the split between the federal courts of appeals that the 9th Circuit has created,” McKenna said in a statement. “The felon disenfranchisement laws of Washington and 47 other states hang in the balance.”

McKenna added that, should the Supreme Court accept the case, he intends to argue it himself.

Attorneys for six Washington state prisoners, Circuit Court Judge A. Wallace Tashima wrote, “have demonstrated that police practices, searches, arrests, detention practices, and plea bargaining practices lead to a greater burden on minorities that cannot be explained in race-neutral ways.”

Joined by Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the majority opinion, Tashima found no “race neutral” explanation for the higher incarceration rates and reversed a U.S. District Court decision in favor of the felons.

“Although (the state) criticized the experts’ studies and the conclusions, the (plaintiffs’) reports, when objectively viewed, support a finding of racial discrimination in Washington’s criminal justice system,” Tashima said in the ruling.

Writing in dissent, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Margaret McKeown said that the merits of the case should be heard at trial. Instead, her colleagues on the bench granted a summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, effectively settling the case pending an appeal.

Echoing McKeown’s contention, Reed said in a statement that prohibitions like Washington’s are on the books across the nation.

“The U.S. Constitution, the Washington Constitution and the laws of 47 other states all agree that felons may lose this important civil right when they violate the rights of others by committing egregious violations of the law,” Reed said in a statement. “I’m pleased the Attorney General will be taking this case to the U.S. Supreme Court and expect a positive outcome.”

Arguing the case, attorneys for the prisoners turned to a series of studies conducted in Seattle and elsewhere in the state showing that racial minorities were charged with crimes at rates far higher than could be explained by differences in levels of criminal activity, said Lawrence A. Weiser, a Gonzaga University law professor involved with the case since the mid-1990s.

“The issue is discrimination in the criminal justice system,” said Weiser, director of Gonzaga’s clinical law program. “The fact is that the disenfranchisement law has always been used to disenfranchise minority communities.”

Recent Department of Corrections figures show that about 28 percent of the state’s prison population is African-American, according to statistics cited in the suit. In contrast, African-Americans account for about 3 percent of Washington’s population.

A review of arrest records, the plaintiffs argued, showed that increased criminal behavior could not account for the disproportionately high incarceration rates among black Washingtonians.

“The disparities aren’t reflective of the actual participation in crime,” said Ryan Haygood, co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which participated in the suit. “They’re reflective of the discrimination in the criminal justice system.”

Speaking on the ruling Tuesday, Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed said the court’s decision came as a surprise, in part because three circuit court panels elsewhere in the country came to opposite conclusions while reviewing similar cases.

Reed said he believes the state prohibition against prisoner voting remains appropriate.

“That’s part of the penalty,” Reed said. “A person loses their rights when they violate the rights of others by perpetrating a felony. … As long as when they get out they get a chance to rejoin society, that’s the important part.”

Reed said he supported a recent change in state law aimed at enabling felons returning to society to regain the vote. Under the new rules, felons no longer have to pay off their court-mandated fines before registering to vote.

Filed 14 years ago, the suit named Reed’s office as a defendant, as well as the Attorney General’s Office and the governor’s office.

In a July 2006 ruling in favor of the state, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Whaley agreed that “evidence of racial bias in Washington’s criminal justice system is compelling.” Still, the Spokane judge ruled, that fact alone was not sufficient to sustain a challenge under the federal Voting Rights Act.

“Taking all of the relevant factors into account, the Court finds that the totality of the circumstances does not support a finding that Washington’s felon disenfranchisement law results in discrimination in its electoral process on account of race,” Whaley said in the decision now reversed by the U.S. Circuit Court panel.

Among the evidence offered to support the plaintiffs’ claims was a recent study on drug arrests in Seattle. The 2004 study, conducted by University of Washington sociologist Katherine Beckett, found that blacks and Latinos were disproportionately arrested on drug charges in part because of a police emphasis on street dealing of crack cocaine.

According to her statements to the court, Beckett found that most drug users and drug dealers in the city are white. Still, 64 percent of those arrested dealing “serious” drugs were black; only 17 percent of those caught in police sting operations were white.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that Beckett’s findings show that police have concentrated on outdoor drug sales areas frequented by minorities in the city’s Pioneer Square and downtown neighborhoods. At the same time, the attorneys argued, city police neglected drug sales areas frequented by whites in Seattle’s University District and Capitol Hill.

The state could have asked that an 11-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals review the case, rather than the Supreme Court. Instead, attorneys for the state will be filing a petition within the next 90 days requesting the high court review the case.

In the meantime, the Attorney General’s Office plans to file a motion to stay the mandate and allow the current system to remain in place until the appeal is resolved, a spokesperson said in a statement.

jchev County-State Issues, Washington

Ahtanum View Corrections Center, the state’s prison for the elderly, disabled or critically ill, may be closed. Reported in the Seattle Times.

A consulting group has recommended that Washington state close its smallest prison, the Ahtanum View Corrections Center in Yakima, to cut costs.Christopher Murray and Associates made the recommendation in a final report last week, and it’s almost identical to a draft report last month. The state’s Office of Financial Management will take it under consideration as it develops the governor’s 2010 supplemental budget.

Ahtanum View houses elderly and infirm inmates.

The consultant also suggests either closing the old buildings at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla or downsizing a facility on McNeil Island to a minimum-security prison.

The goal is to eliminate 1,580 prison beds across the state.

jchev Economic Issues, Washington

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

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

After cutting loose more than 8,000 offenders from probation in the past two months, the state Department of Corrections is considering an even more drastic cost-reduction measure: closing at least one prison.  Article from the Seattle Times.

Faced with the need to slash millions of dollars from their respective budgets, the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the state Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration are awaiting a report from the governor’s Office of Financial Management that is expected to recommend shuttering one adult and one juvenile prison, a move that would result in massive job cuts and the shuttling of hundreds of inmates to other facilities. “It’s like a ‘Sophie’s Choice’ situation,” said DOC Secretary Eldon Vail. “Something has to be shut down.”   Vail said consultants working on the report have visited the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, the Monroe Correctional Complex, McNeil Island Corrections Center, Ahtanum View Corrections Center and Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women in recent weeks to see where cuts can be made. The visits don’t necessarily mean those prisons are being considered for closure, he said.

The DOC budget for the 2009-2011 biennium is nearly $1.8 billion, a roughly $130 million (or 6.7 percent) reduction from the previous two-year period, said agency spokesman Chad Lewis. Dan Robertson, deputy assistant secretary of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration (JRA), the juvenile equivalent of DOC which is overseen by the Department of Social and Health Services, said the JRA saw its budget cut by nearly $23 million (9.7 percent) for this biennium to $213 million. He expects that the report will recommend closing one of two medium/maximum-security facilities — Green Hill School in Chehalis or Maple Lane School near Centralia — which could save the state an estimated $12 million.

Closing any facility would result in staff layoffs and the transfer of inmates to other prisons, Vail and Robertson said. However, neither knew how many jobs could potentially be lost. The DOC and its juvenile-corrections counterpart have been cutting their respective budgets for months through layoffs, by releasing offenders from probation and even by releasing some inmates from custody.   Since July 1, about 8,200 adult offenders deemed to be low risk to reoffend and nonviolent have been cut loose from community custody, this state’s version of probation. Before July, when a new law addressing probation was implemented, the state was supervising about 27,000 offenders outside of prison, Vail said.

The cost-cutting Senate Bill 5288 ordered the reduction in the number of offenders on probation by dropping most low-risk felons and misdemeanor offenders from the program. Sex offenders and violent felons will remain under DOC supervision after their release from prison.  Almost 300 prison jobs and 60 community-corrections positions were cut as a result. An additional 200 community-corrections jobs are expected to be slashed by the end of the year, Vail said.   The slashing of probation services is a complete change from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s stance three years ago when she ordered tightened supervision of convicted felons who violated the terms of their prison release. The governor’s move came after the 2006 deaths of three Seattle-area police officers were blamed on offenders under DOC supervision.

Lewis, of the DOC, said cuts resulting from the Senate bill will not impact the supervision of violent offenders on probation. At the JRA, 85 juvenile offenders have been cut from parole over the past three months, leaving about 444 still under supervision, Robertson said.  Robertson said that because of budget cuts about 34 percent of the nearly 700 youths currently incarcerated will not be placed on parole after they serve their terms. Robertson said this change will likely impact recidivism rates, which he said had been showing promise after the agency revamped its juvenile parole program to include mandatory family counseling.   “If these cuts go through they’ll further deteriorate public safety,” said Tim Welch, spokesman for Washington Federation of State Employees, the union that represents community-corrections officers and administrative staff. “It will probably take a tragedy for the governor and Legislature to realize the grave impact of these cuts.”

Tracey Thompson, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 117, which represents 5,800 DOC employees at 13 prisons, said any closures of prisons or wings inside prisons would be shortsighted.   “Our biggest concern is about closing units and facilities when we’re looking at forecasts that will say that the prison population will start increasing in the next two or three years,” Thompson said, citing figures released by the Washington State Caseload Forecast Council.  The council, which researches potential caseloads in corrections, human-services and public education, actually expects that prison populations will slightly drop between now and early 2011, then begin to slowly grow again, a committee staff member said.   The forecast is based on the average imprisonment rate divided by the projected state population, which is expected to grow.

While it’s unclear which prison could be recommended for closure, Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, has long supported a plan to close the McNeil Island Correctional Complex, a medium-security island prison in Pierce County. Hargrove, who chairs the Human Services and Corrections Committee, said he will be briefed on the closure recommendations, but he doesn’t know when.   “We have a very inefficient prison [McNeil Island] and I’m willing to take a look at the consultants’ work,” Hargrove said. “I’m not sure what the recommendations are at this point. We need to look at making our corrections system more efficient in this budget crisis.”  Thompson and other opponents of closure of the McNeil Island prison say that it would push additional costs to the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), which runs the state’s mental-health treatment program for civilly committed sex offenders on a portion of the island. DOC runs vital services for the island, including ferry and fire services. If the prison is closed, DSHS would have to pick up the tab for those services because there is no proposal to close the sex-offender treatment facility.

jakking Budgets, Economic Issues, Washington

The reality of a  state budget process for the Washington legislature that faced a $9 billion shortfall, solved in part with deep cuts to the prison system last July, have become reality this fall in Clark County.  Reported by KGW News.

Five hundred fewer former inmates will  get parole supervision, Washington Department of Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis said Thursday. Clark County judges will be told these people are no longer under the jurisdiction of the corrrections department. Statewide, the figure is about 8,500 former inmates, and that number could rise to as high 9,400, he said. There were about 27,000 parolees under supervision when the cuts began. The tradeoff, he said, is that those former inmates are considered the least dangerous of the state’s parolees. Those with sex offenses and a history of violence or mental illness will continue to receive supervision, he said. This includes a decision to halt all post-release supervision of sex offenders at 36 months after they leave prison. Some of them had been supervised for 48 months, depending on the circumstances, he said.

The layoffs of community corrections officers started last week. On it’s website this week, the Washington Federation of State Workers had words of caution for the public. “These cuts impact not only jobs but they compromise public safety. Our community orrections members said throughout the (legislative) session and continue to say this. We only hope we don’t have a tragedy that proves the error of this path the Legislature and administration has taken.

jakking Budgets, Community Corrections, County-State Issues, Economic Issues, Parole, WA Clark County, Washington