New prison hitting its stride

POINT MACKENZIE — Just after 9 a.m. Wednesday, prisoners stand lined up outside their cells at the Goose Creek Correctional Center.

Lt. Tony Price has noticed a few of them have swapped uniform pants for sweats or maybe the shirt is wrong.

“You need to be in a complete yellow uniform when we come in here,” Price says. “Otherwise it looks good in here.”

Then it’s on to the next module.

Lt. Kevin Horton led a tour through the facility for a visiting reporter and said what was going on in the module was an inspection. Soon after Goose Creek became fully operational in May 2013 it began staging weekly inspections.

“We’ve really implemented this and led the rest of the department in implementing this,” he said.

Since the prison opened, inmates have been regularly calling the Frontiersman complaining of a lack of things to do. After the tour, inmate Curt Anderson said that had the Frontiersman been allowed in when it wasn’t an inspection day, reporters would have seen dozens of inmates bored, watching television with nothing to do.

“The news, that’s the only way we’re going to get anything fixed in here,” Anderson said.

Horton’s tour included rounds through the classrooms of the prison. There were inmates in the library, inmates teaching and receiving classes. Music floated out of one room where a yellow-uniformed inmate sat behind a stand-up piano.

In another room, a pair of inmates showed off a machine the prison had received to etch plastic signs.

“Make sure outside door is closed,” reads one that Horton held up for a photo.

The prison took in its first inmates in May 2012 and became fully operational a year later. Horton said that at first, not every program was up and running. There’s a room specifically set up with air handling abilities to use as a painting shop that he doesn’t think has been used. The wood shop had just received a shipment of lumber, but hadn’t yet started up classes for inmates.

But the plan, he said, is to eventually have inmates building shacks for the prison’s target shooting range. Not for prisoners to target shoot, but for guards and officers to keep their firearms ratings current. Goose Creek is isolated. It’s far enough down Knik-Goose Bay Road that it can be difficult for officers to get to ranges at other facilities.

Also, the prison recently started up a dog-training program modeled on the successful one at Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility in Eagle River.

A lot of inmates also have jobs. On Wednesday, a dozen or so were outside shoveling snow.

“We don’t want inmates sitting idle,” he said.

A prison could probably get a plow to do the job, but the manual labor keeps inmates busy and they earn a wage — 45 cents an hour if they don’t have a GED and 50 cents an hour if they do. Some other more skilled jobs pay more.

Horton held up that wage increase for high school diploma holders as another incentive Goose Creek puts on inmates bettering themselves. Responsibility is a big part of it. He said that most other prisons deliver mail to inmates. Goose Creek has mailboxes. If you lose your key it’s $5 to get a new one.

“We’re trying to put responsibility back on the offender for him to check his mail,” Horton said.

Inmate Todd Tix complained about the weight room being closed for months. Horton actually brought that up unprompted. He said that when a machine is broken, the weight room has to be shut down while a part is ordered. It can take a long time to get parts in from Outside.

Goose Creek is a medium security facility. Inmates with a maximum security classification go to other facilities like Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward.

But classification isn’t necessarily based on the level of a person’s offense. Tix, for instance, is in prison on a murder conviction. There are numerous lifers at Goose Creek. The system is more based on how an inmate has behaved behind bars.

Goose Creek also houses pre-trial or un-sentenced inmates — folks charged but not yet convicted of a crime that traditionally would be housed at a local jail like the Anchorage Jail or the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility, both of which have run out of room.

Those overflow inmates had previously been housed at Palmer Correctional Center, but Goose Creek is better able to handle them. Horton said that up to three of Goose Creek’s modules can be used to house un-sentenced prisoners.

Horton said that Goose Creek hasn’t yet wrapped up its recruitment process, but as of now is well within its minimum staffing levels for guards. Really, the prison is currently working on getting support staff. Early inmate complaints about a lack of medical staff have been resolved, Horton said. The prison doesn’t have to send inmates out for treatment of anything but the most severe of medical issues. There’s even a dentist who works out of the prison.

Horton said that he’s worked at prisons in Nome and Anchorage and hasn’t ever worked in a place as nice or as challenging as Goose Creek.

Challenges can be in the most bizarre of situations. Soon after the prison opened the Frontiersman fielded calls about backed up and broken toilets.

Horton said the challenge there was “trying to find the right type of toilet paper, as crazy as that sounds.”

He said that Goose Creek has the most modern of surveillance equipment, which means that when an issue arises — say when an inmate smashes a computer or steals something — it is often as simple as reviewing a video to find out who is responsible.

As a prison built with rehabilitation in mind, Horton thinks Goose Creek has huge potential.

“The rehabilitative aspect is unprecedented in the state,” he said. “Goose Creek is going to change corrections.”

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