Out of state WA inmates face strain

[Greg]

Out-of-state inmates face strain | Tacoma News Tribune

The News Tribune
Published: October 2nd, 2007 01:00 AM

Washington is sending an increasing number of its prison inmates out of state, which creates a hardship for family members who want to visit them and often interrupts the classes that inmates take to better prepare them for their eventual release.

Jim Thatcher, the Washington Department of Corrections superintendent in charge of the out-of-state placements, said last month that he found prison space for an additional 240 inmates. That means Washington soon will have 1,273 of its 18,500 inmates serving parts of their sentences at private prisons in Arizona, Minnesota and, now, Oklahoma.

Severe overcrowding in Washington’s 15 prisons forced the state to send its inmates elsewhere. Most of them will remain at private prisons operated by Corrections Corporation of America until sometime in 2009, when the state will be able to transfer inmates to a bigger prison now under construction in Eastern Washington. The state is adding 2,048 beds to the 600-inmate facility at Coyote Ridge.

Most of the moves are temporary. But that’s little consolation to families who are faced with traveling thousands of miles to visit incarcerated relatives.

“Something ought to be done about shipping inmates with close family ties out of state,” said Rick Stoddard, 64, of Chehalis, whose 42-year-old son narrowly avoided transfer from a state prison in Snohomish County to a private prison in Arizona. “That needs to be stopped.”

Nicole Brummitt of Renton wasn’t as fortunate.

Joshua Scott, the father of her son, was transferred to a prison in Florence, Ariz., in April, even though she and her son had been visiting him nearly every weekend for the past year at the Washington state prison outside Aberdeen.

“Right now, they’re talking about sending Josh to Oklahoma,” Brummitt said. “We have a 10-year-old son together and they were separated for 8 years. They had just been able to see each other. My son is having a really hard time. When I ask him what’s wrong, he says, ‘I miss my dad.’”

Brummitt said she and her son made one trip in late May to visit Scott, a 1,500-mile trip to Arizona, compared to the 21/2-hour weekend drive to Aberdeen.

Scott, 28, was convicted of burglary in 1998, armed robbery in 2001 and a second robbery in 2004. With good behavior, he is scheduled for release in 2013, but he could stay in prison until 2018.

Brummitt said Scott obtained his high school diploma equivalency and finished an anger management class while in prison. He also participated in the “Day with Dads” program and helped design a coloring book for children of inmates.

“I know so many people who were screened out (of being sent out of state) that don’t have any families or any kids,” Brummitt said.

VOLUNTEERS SOUGHT FIRST

Thatcher said prison officials first ask for volunteers to go out of state, but they must meet certain criteria.

Each state puts restrictions on the kinds of inmates it will allow private prisons to accept from Washington, he said.

Washington officials want their out-of-state inmate placements to have at least five years remaining on their sentences because inmates who are closer to release are eligible for work-release and other programs. Other inmates are kept in Washington because they have upcoming court appearances or other commitments that make their transfer impractical or expensive, he said.

All of those conditions shrink the pool of inmates eligible for transfer, he said. So some disruption to inmate family visits is unavoidable, he said.

“Eighty-one percent of our offenders have family ties,” Thatcher said. “And the average age of our (prison) population is 34, so they have aging parents and ties with significant others, spouses and children.

“We try to help maintain some of those contacts,” he said.

Washington prison officials try to find comparable classes at out-of-state prisons and are looking at such things as “video visits” to keep inmates in touch with their families, he said.

Phone rates at the Minnesota prison are lower than calling within Washington, and 94 percent of the out-of-state inmates have jobs, some of which are no longer available in Washington prisons due to a court ruling, he said.

DIFFICULT FOR ‘FAMILY-FRIENDLY’ FOCUS

By sending so many inmates out of state, Washington prison officials are straining the agency’s much publicized efforts to become more family friendly.

Corrections Secretary Harold Clarke announced in June 2006 that he was creating a new command to develop programs that encourage stronger ties between prison inmates and their families.

“Family-friendly programs are part of a growing effort within DOC to enhance the successful transition of offenders back into the community after their prison sentences have been completed,” prison officials said at the time.

“Strong family ties are good for children and help reduce the risk that offenders will commit new crimes,” Clarke said.

Washington has been sending its overflow inmates out of state since 2003, largely because of the Legislature’s reluctance to spend $250 million to build a prison every two or three years.

Lawmakers have shortened sentences for inmates with drug addictions to slow the growth of prison admissions, but those efforts have been more than offset by tougher sentencing laws and administrative actions that return inmates to prison if they break the rules of their release.

Overcrowding has put prison officials in a bind, Thatcher said. The state prison population is expected to rise to 20,000 by mid-2009. And prison officials already are renting 730 county jail cells to house inmates who were released but violated rules of their community supervision.

Even so, on any given day there are an additional 400 “violators” that are being housed at the Monroe prison for 30 to 60 days at a time. Thatcher said prison officials are trying to concentrate violators at one prison location so they can provide programs for them.

PUNISHED FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR?

That appears to be the reason Rick and Pat Stoddard’s son, Gregory Peterson, was told in July he might be leaving the Monroe prison for Arizona or Minnesota.

For the past six years, the Stoddards have driven from Chehalis to Snohomish County on weekends to pick up their 15-year-old grandson for an extended family visit. Peterson had earned the privilege of living with his family for weekends in a trailer on the prison grounds.

When they learned of the move out of state, the Stoddards immediately began a campaign, enlisting other family members to help get the relocation plan rescinded. It was.

“I don’t know what worked,” Pat Stoddard said. But last month her son was transferred to McNeil Island in Pierce County, instead of out of state. The recent suicide of their grandson’s biological mother might have been a factor in getting Peterson off the transfer list.

Peterson was convicted in 2001 of trying to hire a hit man to kill his ex-wife, the boy’s mother. He won’t get out of prison until 2014 to 2016.

Pat Stoddard said that because Arizona and Minnesota don’t want trouble-making inmates from Washington prisons, well-behaved inmates are more likely to be sent away.

“Greg is a model inmate,” she said. “He’s a very good candidate to be processed out of the state. So, he is being punished for being good.

“He’s done everything he was supposed to,” she said. “He made one major, big mistake and he’s very remorseful.”

CHANGES COMING IN 2009

Thatcher said state law requires prison officials to consider hardships caused by disrupting family connections and “folks who have extended family visits are at the bottom of the list.”

Inmates who have had 30 or more visits in a six-month period also are less likely to be sent out of state, he said.

“That doesn’t mean to say that if the other jurisdiction screens out the folks we would prefer to send, we sometimes have to find a replacement from further down the list,” Thatcher said.

If prison growth projections stay on track, Thatcher said, no additional inmates will have to been sent out of state.

Washington is making room for several hundred more inmates next year, and the state should be able to accommodate the influx of inmates until Coyote Ridge opens in January 2009. That’s when inmates will be coming back to Washington, with the highest priority for those who have been away the longest, he said.

“We’re closer to being out of the rent-a-bed business than we were in 2003,” Thatcher said. “But it will continue through the remainder of 2008.”

Brummitt said she is not consoled by the temporary nature of Joshua Scott’s transfer.

“This has been temporary for guys who have been out of state for five years already,” she said.

Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436

joe.turner@thenewstribune.com