Prison project on ice

May 13, 2007

By Russell Stigall

Frontiersman

MAT-SU - Mat-Su's $300 million medium-security prison is in lock-down for the time being.

The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation was slated to begin overseeing the design and construction of the proposed 2,251-bed facility at Point MacKenzie this summer. That project is now on hold.

Borough Manager John Duffy said inflated construction and operation costs have forced Commissioner Joe Schmidt, of the Department of Corrections, to round up extra funds.

Duffy said the commissioner must find how to fund the project fully before moving forward.

&#8220Before advancing the design process, he wants to know how to fund on the capital and operating side. There is a difference between that and completely stopping the process. That is the prudent thing to do,” Duffy said.

Schmidt said the funding issue is only a temporary setback for the prison.

&#8220It's not coming next week, and it is not over,” he said.

The Senate bill that started the prison construction project, SB 65, was passed in 2004. The bill allowed for inflation based on the Anchorage consumer price index, about 2.5 percent to 3 percent, Schmidt said. But that increase has lagged behind the rise of construction costs.

&#8220Compare [CPI] to the 6 to 9 percent for construction inflation and it runs out ahead of the project,” Schmidt said.

To get ahead of inflation, the project had to take advantages of economies of scale and build more beds per facility, Schmidt said.

When Schmidt picked up the project, the proposed prison had grown to 2,251 beds.

&#8220Two thousand beds is frankly too many beds for one place,” Schmidt said.

With a smaller prison at Point Mac, some of the development impacts could be reduced, Schmidt said. He also said he thinks the prison will shrink over the next year, down to 1,000 or 1,500 beds, as he and his administration approach other Alaska prisons for possible expansion.

&#8220One big prison in the Mat-Su would not help a Bethel prisoner in pretrial,”

In Alaska, the recidivism rate, the rate in which prisoners return to prison after release, is 60 percent, Schmidt said.

He said officials in Bethel told him the giant cultural differences between their society and violent and competitive prison life is a factor in that area's recidivism rate. Keeping Bethel's convicted criminals close to their culture and families may reduce recidivism.

Schmidt said he plans to talk with Seward, Fairbanks, Bethel and Anchorage officials about expansion of their existing prisons.

&#8220The optimum would be to put some beds here, some beds there,” Schmidt said.

Senate Bill 65 gave Schmidt some wiggle room for reworking the medium-security prison plan. The Department of Corrections does not have to make a final decision until July 2009.

Schmidt said his department would like to keep the prison's current modular design, with separate buildings for different security levels.

&#8220That is the cheapest way, and it allows for expansion later,” Schmidt said.

When the population of the state grows, so does the prison population, Schmidt said. And he predicts that when the gas pipeline comes, the prison will expand.

The modular design is also safer and allows prisoners to better transition to freedom.

&#8220You don't want to transition them from a locked box to the street. Again, it is about recidivism,” Schmidt said.

The process set in motion in 2004 is still in action. Schmidt said his department has made investments in the Mat-Su prison that he does not want to lose.

Also, the state capital budget will allow Alaska Housing Finance to accept $30 million from the Mat-Su Borough for design and construction of the prison. The borough will sell bonds to pay for the prison.

Contact Russell Stigall at 352-2267 or russell.stigall@frontiersman.com