Goose Creek Correctional Center nears completion

KNIK — Here are a few things you might not know about the Goose Creek Correctional Center:

• It houses Alaska’s largest commercial kitchen, probably the state’s largest kitchen period.

• If completely cut off from the outside world, there are enough supplies on hand and backup power to keep the place running for two months.

• One officer will oversee 128 prisoners in the cellblocks.

• The vocational/technical education center includes a booth for painting cars.

• There are more than 800 video cameras installed throughout the facility.

The prison has been nearly a decade in the making. Mat-Su Borough Purchasing Officer Russ Krafft said that in the years he has worked on the facility off of Alsop Road in the Point MacKenzie area he’s learned more than he thought a person could about prison operations.

Krafft led a tour of the 435,000-square-foot, $240 million prison Friday. The borough built the prison and the state will make a series of lease payments that will end with the state owning the facility. The project ran into some trouble this winter when state legislators balked at the projected cost to operate Goose Creek, which will be the state’s largest prison.

The project will be completed on time and under budget, Krafft said. The money left over from the bond sale will buy things the borough wasn’t required to supply — tables, chairs, heavy equipment — and save the state money on opening costs, he said.

Everyone is proceeding as if the prison is going to open, Krafft said. In March, the Department of Corrections will move in 30 prisoners from the nearby Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm. Those prisoners will move through the facility in stages to make sure the toilets work, light switches were installed correctly and just generally check that the place is ready to handle prisoners.

That test group will move out in the summer. But whether and how soon the place fills up with prisoners will depend largely on whether DOC receives the money it needs from the state, Krafft said.

It’s kind of amazing, really, how many things an organization has to think about when building a prison.

Take the kitchen, for example. Prisoners will cook the food. So the knives they handle will be tethered to the workstations and checked back in to a knife locker after mealtimes.

“You can stab somebody, but only if they’re this close,” Krafft said, demonstrated with a stabbing motion as he showed off the massive kitchen.

Other interesting facts about the kitchen/dining hall: inmates will get 12 minutes to eat, which is actually a pretty tough design challenge when you’re talking about moving 1,200-plus inmates through three dining halls.

There are no skillets or fryers. The lack of grease accomplishes a few things. It’s healthier for inmates, there’s less likelihood of a kitchen fire and there’s less kitchen waste since there’s not a river of used grease requiring disposal or recycling.

Speaking of waste — food scraps will be feed to pigs at the nearby Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm.

Another problem designers faced was in putting inmates together who won’t immediately start fighting. Krafft said new inmates will be put in a special unit while they learn the ropes and officers get a feel for what kinds of prisoners they are.

One of the main sorting factors? Age.

“They will have, if it’s appropriate, a geriatric unit,” Krafft said. “You don’t want old guys with a bunch of teenagers.”

There are also things that you only realize are a problem after the building is already constructed. A good example is the medical unit. Designers had decided to paint walls and doors red in there.

Which makes sense intellectually. A lot of medical organizations — the American Red Cross, various local blood banks — use red in their logos. But in practice, Krafft said, walking through there was akin to walking through some crazy hellscape.

“It was way too much,” he said. The walls are white now.

Sewage is another challenge, and not just because the borough — in the chapter of the story of the prison’s construction that generated the most controversy — had to build a sewage treatment plant across the street since there aren’t any suitable facilities in the area.

But it’s not just your ordinary sewage. Bored or angry inmates tend to flush things down the toilet. So to keep the lines clear, the borough installed a device called a “Muffin Monster” to grind up anything prisoners flush down. The product’s website says it can handle rags, rocks, wood, clothing and plastics, among other things.

Krafft said that all the labor on the grounds — from lawn and vehicle maintenance to cooking — will be done by prisoners. Those are skills the prisoners can take with them into the real world, he said.

And most of them will return to the real world. Krafft said statistics show that about 96 percent of the inmates in state custody will eventually be released, which is why the prison has such a strong emphasis on training.

In addition to the prison jobs there are classrooms teaching everything from carpentry to auto maintenance. It’s actually not clear at this stage what the curriculum will entail, but the learning spaces were built with reconfiguration in mind.

“They can configure them to whatever they’re teaching at the time,” Krafft said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.

To see more more images of the facility visit

http://www.frontiersman.com/shared-content/gallery/?galleryid=25&gallery_page=0&album_page=0&albumid=118&mediaid=3352