Corrections in the Headlines: 2008

A look back with Corrections1

There’s never a dull moment in the world of corrections, and 2008 was no exception.

Tragedy strikes

Body armor was back in the news when the stabbing death of correctional officer Jose Rivera at the U.S. Penitentiary Atwater in June sparked a nationwide call for stab-proof vests. The union filed a subsequent grievance upon learning that the new vests were not made with wire mesh, a necessary material for spike and stab protection. In November, it came to light that slain Fla. CO Donna Fitzgerald was not wearing body armor at the time of her attack, however, the final report made clear that a vest might not have saved her.

Kick butt

Swept up in the national mood, tobacco bans in correctional facilitlies ramped up in 2008. No doubt, there were more than a few unhappy inmates; correctional officers came down on different sides of the fence, some nonchalant and others miffed about the rise in inmate agitation and contraband. (One C1 member said the smoking ban made him give up the habit, too — one less New Year’s resolution for 2009!)

Intel

Security threat groups were out in menacing number, as always. The need to share information throughout the law enforcement community came to a crucial fore in 2008. Look for a gang clearinghouse to take shape across jurisdictions and states in the coming year.

Holed up

Of course, every inmate is a potential threat. Last July, in a worst-case scenario turned best-case, Maine State Prison’s “Super Max” underwent a 7-hour hostage situation in which a highly dangerous inmate held a staff member and another inmate at knifepoint. Few details of the crisis were released, but according to a prison spokeswoman, the department had specially trained crisis negotiators on site; a tactical team from the state police also responded to the incident. These two teams expertly brought the crisis to a peaceful end.

Another hostage situation — this time at a private prison in Texas — erupted into a small-scale riot over healthcare after two inmates took two staff members hostage, demanding better medical treatment. During the melee, a crowd of inmates, many of them immigrants, set fire to the exercise room. A local newspaper reported that firefighters had to extinguish bonfires inmates had set to keep warm overnight. Both staff members were released safely.

Shakedown

Countless jails and prisons around the country launched offenses against the “Whack-a-Mole” levels of contraband proliferation in their facilities, chiefly cell phones. Cell-sniffing dogs were first unleashed in Maryland and Virginia, and were so effective, the tactic quickly spread. These specially trained dogs target cell phones, but some can even root out cell phone SIM cards.

An inmate suicide last September compelled Washington state prison officials to sign off on a costly shakedown — done the old fashioned way: by humans. Last month, the Tacoma News Tribune reported that “a special team of 44 officers ... went cell to cell and inmate to inmate through the 1,280-inmate prison.The inmates were strip-searched and officers crawled beneath beds and desks, peered into light fixtures, and made sure TVs and radios hadn’t been pried open so that contraband could be hidden inside. The two-man teams spent roughly 20 minutes per cell.” Time to call the dogs.

News of the weird

The case of the “Fugitive Mom” grabbed headlines in August, when a California woman was arrested for an escape that occurred 30 years ago. The escapee, Susan LeFevre, 53, whom those close to her call a “typical suburban mom,” drew sympathy from the public and (some) prison staff alike for both her kindness and her extenuating circumstances stemming from a drug charge in 1976.

But Dr. Laura Bedard, Assistant Warden of Programs at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida, believes that if prison officials allowed LeFevre to go free after a brazen escape, that would encourage others to do the same. “LeFevre and her attorney should have come up with a legal way for her to appeal the courts decision — then she might even be home free by now,” Bedard said.

In legal news of the weird, the “heat was off” Pelican Bay State Prison in California, when, in November, a federal court decided that it is up to prison officials — not the court — to determine what constitutes a “hot meal” for prisoners. Prison officials held that their obligation was to serve cooked food, not an explicitly piping hot, mitt-warming meal — because, they said, food naturally cools during delivery.

PB&J now just “J”

Cost-cutting was on everyone’s mind in 2008, and some of the most innovative measures started in the kitchen. The Utah Department of Corrections, aiming to trim food service contracts, sought funding for a “cook/chill” kitchen facility that could whip up TV dinner-style eats for jails that lacked fully endowed kitchens of their own. And if kitch wasn’t incentive enough, the agency billed the cook/chill kitchen as “disaster-ready,” able to stockpile thousands of emergency meals at a time in the event of a natural or manmade disaster.

But for most facilities, “no-frills” was on the menu. In Polk County, Fla., “crackers replaced cornbread, and chocolate milk gave way to water” as the county tries to save $200,000. The sheriff, somewhat famously, even cut peanut butter from peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Let’s hope he left the crusts on.

And the winner is ...

Overcrowding took the cake as the issue of the year.

The nation’s jails and prisons have been pushing past capacity for years. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report (PDF) released this month, 2.3 million Americans were behind bars in 2007, 1.5 percent more than in 2006 and a new record. The number includes about 780,000 people in local jails, 1.4 million in state prisons, and 200,000 in federal prison. Roughly one in five state prisoners and more than half of federal prisoners were serving time for drug offenses.

While corrections professionals wait patiently for the criminal justice system to cap the swelling population — or for funding to build new facilities — they are faced with exceptionally dangerous working conditions (assualts in one Texas prison system have doubled in the last five years), not to mention major liability concerns.

Overcrowding is blamed for everything from inadequate healthcare to a marked lack of rehabilitative programs. Plus, as any CO can tell you, overcrowding creates a stressful environment — lighter fluid for violence.

Agencies are contending with the problem in different (and always creative) ways. Arizona, Florida and Hawaii, with their temperate climates, opted to build tent colonies to house low-level offenders, a stop-gap measure that’s been in the playbook for over a decade. Even the Kalamazoo (MI) County Jail constructed “Tent City” to house overflow — for summer months only.

The obvious imparative of overflow is to look to other geographic locations for space, and that’s just what many jurisdictions did. Kane County, Ill. officials thought a new jail would solve their problems, but two months after opening, their capacity was maxed out, forcing administrators to lease space from nearby faciliites.

Roanoke County in Virginia is taking the long view by recruiting and training new correctional officers for an “overflow” jail that is still being built. One hundred seventy recruits were chosen from a pool of 1,000 applicants to work in the “huge” new facility due to open in March 2009, thereby easing overcrowding from neighboring counties.

Elsewhere, the funds weren’t flowing. New Jersey Department of Corrections took a hard tack with one county facility, telling them in no uncertain terms, to ease crowding or face shutdown.

In a high-stakes trial in California last month, a federal judge took a controversial approach by pushing for early release of certain inmates — the hope (derided by many as folly) being that rehabilitation and probation will pick up the slack for conventional detention. In fact, nationwide there has been a significant push toward monitoring programs, inlcuding electronic and alcohol monitoring and even GPS, to keep select offenders (i.e., on probation or awaiting trial) offenders out of jail entirely.

No two ways about it: Overcrowding puts the squeeze on resources, and makes a tough job even tougher for corrections professionals. And short of a miracle bond measure or, ahem, less crime, it will continue to do so in 2009.