Options for prisoners examined

JUNEAU -- Alaska state prisons are facing an overcrowding problem, and the Legislature is working on plans to remedy the situation.

The state Management and Budget Office recently released a study stating that, by 2008, there would be more than 1,700 prisoners unable to be accommodated by Alaska's overcrowded state prisons. Currently, about 700 of Alaska's 4,800 inmates are being held out of state, most of them in a correctional facility in Arizona.

Several solutions are on the table at the moment, but none of them are without their problems. Senate Bill 65 is currently under review by a finance committee in the Legislature. This bill would provide space for 1,600 additional prison beds within the state, and permit the return to Alaska of 626 inmates currently held in Arizona. Though the outlook for this bill remains good, legislators are divided over the means in which it should be executed.

Sen. Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, is sponsoring a bill that would provide for the construction of a 1,200-bed prison facility near Sutton. This facility would be built and operated by the state. However, Cornell Companies, a private prison firm from Texas, claims it can run a comparable facility in Whittier for 20 to 25 percent less than the Sutton prison's projected budget; this building would be leased by the state, but staffed by Cornell.

These financial figures have yet to be substantiated. Though some initial cost studies have been issued that show a state-run facility costing more than a privately operated facility, itself in turn more expensive than the current solution, the committee has not yet finished its investigation, and the situation remains too preliminary to predict a course of action.

There may, for example, be unforeseen costs associated with the Whittier prison plan. Neil Gunn, management analyst for OMB, predicts that the costs of maintaining a police presence in the town to match the facility and keeping the Whittier tunnel open additional hours might reduce the feasibility of the plan.

Though no lawmakers have yet come out in open support of the Whittier prison, both Gov. Frank Murkowski and Green oppose the idea.

Green noted that the Whittier prison proposal would give a private company undue control over state assets, and the current system leeches both jobs and money from the state. "This state has wasted time and money on private prison legislation, and we have no additional prison beds to show for it," Green commented in a recent press release.

The final alternative is simply sending a greater number of offenders to be held in the Arizona prison.

Regardless of the most feasible solution for Alaska's prisons, all involved parties agree that the situation is ripe for change. "Make no mistake about it," Green saud, "we need to expand our prison system."