Forum to focus on prisoner re-entry

WASILLA — Tucked away in rural corners of the Mat-Su Borough are four state of Alaska prisons that already incarcerate nearly one-third of the state’s inmates.

It’s that reality and the projected growth in the Valley’s prison population that are the impetus behind the Mat-Su Community and Corrections Fall Forum: Assisting with Successful Prisoner Re-Entry from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Oct. 24 at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, 1001 S. Mack Dr., Wasilla.

Bill Aube said the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness’s Alaska Prisoner Re-entry Taskforce organized the meeting as a follow up to a spring information gathering session in mid-May.

Aube said the 1,200-bed Goose Creek Correctional Facility is nearly full and Alaska will need to build another new prison by 2016. At a cost of more than $50,000 to house one prisoner for a year, the current corrections system in Alaska is unsustainable, he said.

“This is about solving that problem another way,” Aube said. “How can we help people be successful upon re-entry in our community?”

Many of the people filling Alaska’s prisons have one thing in common: they’ve been incarcerated before.

Dave Rose, director of the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, said nearly all — 95 percent — of people presently incarcerated will re-enter society. Of that group, 48 percent will be re-arrested and returned to prison within one year of release, and after three years, 66 percent of people released from prison re-offend, Rose said.

It’s those numbers Rose and Aube seek the community’s help to address at the forum Thursday in Wasilla.

“We want to fold them back into the community as soon as possible and help them be successful,” Aube said.

According to the Mat-Su Corrections update from Aug. 13, adult DOC facilities in the Valley — Goose Creek Correctional Facility, Mat-Su Pre-Trial, Palmer Correctional Center and Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm — house 1,736 of the state’s 6,000-person inmate population.

Rose said the idea is to get out in front of the social impacts associated with roughly doubling the region’s prisoner population.

The fall forum builds on questions raised at the spring event and work done so far to answer those questions, he said. The spring forum identified barriers to re-entry in several areas such as housing, education and training, employment, medical and transportation.

“We hope to have all agencies, organizations and individuals from the Mat-Su Valley present to learn about how we can help reduce recidivism among inmates,” Rose said.

The free forum is open to the public, includes lunch and is sponsored by the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, Mat-Su Health Foundation and the Alaska Prisoner Re-entry Taskforce.

The forum includes a keynote address by Ron Taylor, DOC deputy commissioner, peer insights by Cathleen McLaughlin of the Alaska Native Justice Center and closing comments from Sharon Scott at the Mat-Su Health Foundation.

Lunch is provided, and while people eat they are invited to sit in on a series of panel presentations on housing, education and training, employment, transportation, community information, health and wellness and community involvement.

Presenters include John Conant, assistant superintendent of operations at Goose Creek Correctional Facility; John Weaver of Valley Residential Services; Brad Gillespie and Tamika Ledbetter of Department of Labor Workforce Development; Gary Olsen, DOC criminal justice planner, Kevin Munsen of Mat-Su Health Services, Rachel Greenberg of the Mat-Su Transit Coalition; Sue Magestro of Children of Incarcerated Parents; and Claire Waddoup of Partners for Progress.

Aube said the coalition he heads is aware of the social impacts other regions in Alaska and around the U.S. have experienced after adding a large new prison as a neighbor. Homelessness is a problem in the Valley now, but adding 50 people each month to the mix who are fresh out of prison and in need of housing will only amplify the need for low-income housing in the Valley.

“That’s why the homeless coalition started this,” Aube said.

It would have been a better plan, he said, to study the community impacts and craft fixes before plopping down a 1,200-bed prison in the Valley.

“What the borough or local city governments didn’t do is plan for any of this,” Aube said. “The first thing we should have done, but didn’t, is we should have had a plan in place before we ever built a prison.”

Because government didn’t address these issues, now the work is being done by a coalition of agencies and community members, he said.

Aube said however difficult it is now to find affordable and livable housing in the Valley, that problem will be exponentially worse for prisoners since many landlords won’t rent to violent sexual offenders, felons or people with bad credit. Even funding for housing that comes to communities through the federal U.S. Housing and Urban Development has restrictions that prevent its use to provide prisoner housing, he said.

“We already know we can’t meet the need that is going to come,” Aube said.

Rose said the coalition is looking at tools other areas in the state use to solve the associated social problems.

“We’re looking for collaborators with ideas to support transition and reduce recidivism,” he said.

For more information or to RSVP, contact matsuhousing @gmail.com.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.