Need for prison expansion increases

SUTTON -- A dirt road leads past a large outdoor recreation area where men walk or jog shirtless in the warm afternoon sun. Nearby, there's a spirited volleyball game in progress. Those who aren't exercising loll on the grass, soaking up the weather. Seven neatly painted buildings stand next to the field, and the housing units could pass for expensive condos, given their view of the Talkeetna Mountains rising steeply to the north.

Except for the cyclone fence and razor wire, that is.

Palmer Correctional Center houses 216 inmates in medium security and 176 in minimum security. The men used to live in Bethel, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Wasilla -- until their crimes brought them together at what Superintendent Zee Hyden calls "a secret society" just off the Glenn Highway near Sutton.

When it comes time for politicians in Juneau to divvy up the pie of public money, Hyden believes the Alaska Department of Corrections gets overlooked.

"We're out of sight, out of mind," he said.

But if prisoners doing hard time on hard beds in this state are forgotten, their Alaska counterparts Outside are even more obscure. A total of 675 Alaskans are jailed in other states because of prison overcrowding here.

All but 22 of them are in Florence, Ariz., where Alaska has contracted since 1995 with a private firm called Corrections Corp. of America for their incarceration. Other prisoners from Alaska -- including at least one woman -- are in Washington, Oregon, West Virginia, Virginia, Colorado, Oklahoma or Kansas. No Alaska women are serving time in Arizona.

"At the time the department entered into the contract it was seen as a temporary fix to a serious overcrowding problem," said Portia Parker, deputy superintendent for Corrections.

It has always been Corrections' goal to bring those Alaskans home to serve time, she said, but the state budget crunch has prevented that from happening. The number of Alaska inmates Outside declined somewhat after the new Anchorage jail opened, but it was immediately at capacity. Since then, the number of Alaskans in Arizona has been creeping back up.

Costs of incarceration

Corrections officials say it's beneficial for inmates to be in their home state. The proximity to family can help them rehabilitate, they contend, and at some point it's more cost effective to build new facilities in Alaska than to keep paying CCA.

Just where that trade-off point is found has become the subject of an ongoing debate. State Sen. Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, has suggested building new prison beds in several places around Alaska. A bill she introduced into the Legislature calls for 1,100 to 1,300 new beds statewide, with 370 of those at the Palmer Correctional site.

"That would allow us to bring the prisoners home and get them redistributed around the state," Green said. "It gives you enough leverage to free up the overcrowding in Juneau, Bethel and Fairbanks."

The bill currently is in the Senate Finance Committee. Green said that if it were passed, estimates on how long it would take to bring new facilities online range from two to five years. By then, she said, there wouldn't be much difference in cost between expanding the Mat-Su prison, along with others in the state, or continuing to pay for incarceration Outside.

Alaska must pay for prisoners' travel to Arizona, for example, as well as housing and oversight in the CCA facility. Alaska also must pay for prisoners' return to the location of their arrest once their sentence is completed.

The contract with CCA costs $53 per Alaska prisoner per day, according to Jerry Burnett, finance director for the Department of Corrections. He said the real cost is about $66 a day when transportation and other factors are included.

The contract rate actually has gone down somewhat since the private company built a new facility and moved the Alaskans in, Burnett said. Even with the reduction because CCA now gets more money from the federal government, Alaska's budget for contracting out-of-state incarceration is $15.2 million annually, compared with an overall correctional facility budget of $78 million.

Burnett said the numbers get "squishy" when trying to arrive at a per-day cost to house inmates in Alaska. Comparing the costs here against those in Arizona can't be done accurately, he said.

The price to house inmates outside of Alaska doesn't take into account the financial cost for Alaskans who want to visit relatives jailed there, or the toll such distances take on relationships.

One Valley man, whose son is serving time in Arizona, said the family hasn't been able to visit during the three and a half years of incarceration. "We just can't afford to," he said.

His son first was sentenced to a California prison along with another man involved in the crime. However, because they needed to be segregated from one another, the Valley resident was placed in isolation.

"My son stayed in the hole for three months before they figured out what to do with him," the father said.

That's when the son was transferred to Arizona. Now, he and his accomplice are being sent back to Alaska for the remainder of their terms. But the Valley inmate is going to prison in Fairbanks because the other inmate is headed for Anchorage, the father said.

He said the years without seeing his son were "pretty hard." He couldn't call his son in prison, and had to wait for calls from him. They spoke about once every two weeks, the man said.

His advice about Alaska's prison overcrowding?

"If you want to keep them here the cost is something we have to bear," the father said. "Early release is not right, but sending them Outside is not right either."

There are 3,022 prisoners in Alaska's "hard bed facilities," Parker said. That excludes halfway houses and treatment facilities where some inmates are doing part of their sentence. The current prison population is 98 percent of the state facilities' capacity and the count usually fluctuates between 97 percent and 100 percent, Parker said.

It's the same at Palmer Correctional, where a spokesman said Friday the population was 97 percent of capacity.

Who stays? Who goes?

Several factors are considered when state Corrections officials decide who stays here and who serves time Outside. Parker calls it a "detailed classification of prisoners" that takes into account the type of crime, the inmate's behavior in pre-trial or other previous facilities, whether they've been involved in fights or with contraband, and whether they've participated in treatment programs.

The department tries to place those with long-term sentences in Arizona. Also, it's sometimes not feasible to put two inmates in the same facility because of possible reprisal or other reasons, Parker said.

Under the Arizona contract, however, CCA doesn't have to accept extremely high-risk inmates -- dangerous offenders serving time at maximum security prisons. That category includes most of the inmates in the Seward prison, which is Alaska's only maximum security unit, Parker said.

The CCA contract also has limits regarding inmates with mental conditions. That accounts for a surprisingly high cost to the Department of Corrections, she said, adding, "Corrections is the largest mental health provider in the state."

Palmer Correctional Center contracts with two mental health clinicians to treat inmates with mental problems. Those inmates are housed together in one of the seven medium security buildings. Hyden emphasized that the cost, although high, is necessary.

"Those, too, will be released someday and those, too, will become your neighbor," he said.

The Palmer prison has a total staff of 105, including 70 correctional officers. Hyden said they try to cut costs by being as self-sufficient as possible. For example, inmates do body work on damaged state vehicles, and the prison has its own carpentry shop and vehicle maintenance shop. And a 1946 Studebaker with tank serves as water truck to keep dust down on the prison roads.

"It runs," Hyden confirmed with a grin.

Turning serious, he said that Alaskans must deal with prison overcrowding eventually. Hyden believes Green's bill doesn't go far enough, and that 2,000 new beds should be added across the state.

"The need is paramount," he said.