Inmates in Wyoming jails may begin to boost their bank accounts. This account from the AP:
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday recommended unanimously a bill that would put 10% of an inmate’s earnings in a savings account. Inmates would receive the money upon release. Rawlins Democrat George Bagby sponsored the legislation. He says inmates earn between $20 and $160 a month doing everything from washing dishes to driving heavy equipment. Inmates spend earnings on things like child support payments and personal items at the prison canteens. Bagby says newly released inmates are often practically penniless. He says the savings might give them an advantage when they begin a life outside of jail. The bill now moves to the Senate floor.
vericatrajkova Trust Accounts, Wyoming
A proposed Wyoming state law would allow sheriffs to release booking photographs and other basic information about inmates housed in county jails.
House Bill 72 has been endorsed by the House Judiciary Committee and is awaiting consideration by the full House of Representatives. As interpreted by most county attorneys, Wyoming law allows only the Department of Corrections, which operates state prisons, to publicly release information on inmates. The proposed bill would authorize county sheriffs to release the same basic data, including an adult inmate’s name, photo, reason for incarceration, sentencing details and release date …
Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric said he believes the information should be public. “The taxpayers built that jail, and they ought to know who is in it,” Skoric said, adding that the Wyoming Association of County Attorneys supports the bill.
Publicly distributing information on county inmates is an important part of a Wyoming crime victim notification system in development, said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Rosie Berger, R-Big Horn. “We realized there was some information missing to make the program really effective in protecting victims of crime,” Berger said in an e-mail.
The Gillette News has more information.
vericatrajkova Public Release, WY Park County, Wyoming
Wyoming may benefit from the economic problems of less fiscally fortunate states.
A team of recruiters for the Wyoming Department of Corrections is in Wisconsin, where General Motors is closing a plant by Christmas, two years ahead of schedule. Department recruiters also will begin advertising in Virginia, where 200 to 300 corrections jobs were recently eliminated. Michigan continues to be a fertile hunting ground for job-seekers. The department has three more trips planned to that economically depressed state, said Brenda Reedy, recruiting manager for the Wyoming Department of Corrections. Of the 125 new corrections officers the department hired last year, 72 came from Michigan, she said …
So far Wyoming has repeated its historical contrarian position in the face of national economic downturns. While other states are cutting programs and freezing new hires and wages, the Wyoming Legislature is expected to find another budget surplus when lawmakers come to Cheyenne in January for the 40-day general legislative session.
More in the article at the Cheyenne Star-Tribune.
vericatrajkova Economic Issues, Wyoming
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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Although Wyoming’s population has essentially remained the same for more than two decades, the number of employees working to oversee the state’s prisons and local jails has nearly tripled, according to federal justice statistics.
A Wyoming Department of Corrections spokeswoman said tougher laws mean more prisoners. A local jail commander here in Laramie County cited that, the lack of a work release program and an inconsistent juvenile justice system as reasons for more incarcerations and thus more corrections employees. elinda Brazzale, public information officer for the Wyoming Department of Corrections, said the public has demanded stronger penalties for crimes. Even for substance abuse,” Brazzale said. “You end up with more people in prison.”
In 1982, there were about 510,000 people living in Wyoming, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The population has waned and waxed since, with approximately 515,000 residents in 2006. During that time, the number of employees working to oversee local jails and state prisons increased from 583 in 1982 to 1,570 in 2005, a near threefold increase, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Corrections employees working to oversee state prisons more than doubled, from 429 in 1982 to 919 in 2005, according to the bureau. Detention employees for local jails in Wyoming more than quadrupled in that time, from 154 to 651.
A great deal more detail is available at the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.
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Virginia DOC has contracted with Wyoming DOC to take up to 300 of the western state’s inmates. The contract could be worth $18.5m over the next two years to cash-strapped VADOC.
Just last year, Virginia officials warned that the number of state prisoners projected to be added to its 33,300-inmate system would require the construction of one new 1,000-bed prison a year for the next six years. Yesterday Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said, “the forecast regarding the need for future prison bed space has not changed, and bed space is at a premium. “However, this is hopefully a short-term solution to meet current needs of the DOC and the state,” he said. Traylor said that “by bringing in out-of-state inmates, we are able to keep all state prison facilities open and all . . . employees working.” The alternative could be closing prisons and laying off employees, he said.
The plan seems counter-intuitive for an overcrowded system, and the readers’ comments to the Richmond Times-Dispatch article are uniformly negative. Perhaps the DOC will try to make a better case.
vericatrajkova Overcrowding, Virginia, Wyoming
Small jails need medical services support just like any other. For some agencies, this is a one-person operation.
The man who has been providing health care for Park County Jail WY inmates is seeking to increase his duties and salary when his contract expires. George “Herk” Albrecht, a family nurse practitioner with a Ph.D. in nursing practice, signed on with Park County last year to provide in-jail inmate health care for 2007-08. He receives an annual salary of $55,000 for a minimum 48 hours per month on an on-call basis, with his contract reviewed annually. On Tuesday, Albrecht proposed a salary increase to $98,000 per year for providing a minimum of 120 hours on the job per month, with a biannual contract evaluation.
Albrecht notes that he
“grossly underestimated” the time it would take to tend to prisoner needs, which he calculated last year at 12 hours per week. The actual number of hours he’s spent was more like 676 hours for the seven months he has served. In addition, Albrecht said his job has evolved into providing “medical and psychological care” for the staff of the Law Enforcement Center, both for city and county officers and deputies.
The County will let Albrecht know its decision soon. Read more about this story from the Cody Enterprise.
vericatrajkova Inmate Health, WY Park County, Wyoming
The Two Rivers Authority, the development arm of the city of Hardin MT spent $27m to build a jail on the expectation they could rent cells to overcrowded counties and to out-of-state agencies. Now they find themselves deep into a lawsuit with the State who claim they are not allowed to bring in non-Montana offenders.
”Not only is the proposed use of the facility unauthorized, but it conflicts with Montana’s overall correctional scheme to provide for Montana offenders – not to benefit economically from the interstate exchange of inmates,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Anders wrote in the state’s motion …
Hardin has asked the judge to stop the state and the Department of Corrections, which is also named in the suit, from barring Two Rivers Authority from contracting for inmates. Two Rivers and CiviGenics, which contracted to operate the facility, have tried to get contracts with the state of Wyoming and the Bureau of Indian Affairs detention division. Wyoming won’t sign an agreement without approval from the Department of Corrections, and the BIA can’t contract for enough inmates to open the facility, TRA officials have said.
In its response, the state acknowledges that the BIA could house adults in Hardin who have been arrested and are awaiting trial because those would probably be short-term and thus “consistent with the nature and function of a county jail or local detention facility,” Anders wrote. “However, plaintiffs are not entitled to contract with the BIA or other states for felony offenders who are serving sentences and/or awaiting release from custody, or offenders convicted of tribal violations … because these uses are not allowed” by state law, she wrote.
Hardin is just one of a series of entrepreneurial agencies and counties who have built jails greater than their own needs to capture revenues from other counties not so fortunate. Several of these schemes have encountered economic woes with the recent moves toward pre-trial release, re-entry programs and similar diversion tactics.
vericatrajkova MT Hardin, Montana, Wyoming