Corrections commissioner shows legislators video of life from inside to emphasize how difficult it is to control inmates under the current budget.
By MARK BRUNSWICK
Star Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Already dealing with a $10 million budget cut, state Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian is using a reality TV approach to highlight the perils of slicing any more funding to a prison system that houses 9,700 of Minnesota’s most violent and dangerous offenders.
Fabian is presenting video footage taken from prison security cameras, showing a guard being head-butted while transporting a prisoner, another guard sprayed with hot water and honey and then assaulted, and inmate fights that include standoffs with makeshift weapons.
The five-minute video, which includes footage of assaults, fires and flooding at three prisons, is an attempt to put a face on how difficult it is to maintain control in a system already struggling with funding cuts.
In the past six years, the system has had $85 million in operational cuts and reduced staff by more than 300 positions. Double bunking to save money at prisons in St. Cloud and Stillwater has proved problematic. Cuts in prisoner recreation time has led to violence, the department said.
Unlike other state agencies, the prison system can’t have a waiting list because courts determine who gets sent to prison, and it can’t reduce its hours, Fabian said at a recent legislative hearing.
“In most other agencies, a lack of adequate personnel and resources is not going to result in someone getting stabbed in the back or beaten up,” Fabian told the committee. “Real people are working in these positions, and it is real dangerous.”
With a general fund budget of $472 million, Minnesota’s eight prisons rank 48th in the nation in costs per inmate, largely because the system has adopted a policy of locking up only the most serious offenders. The state spends 2.7 percent of its general fund budget on corrections, compared with a U.S. average among states of 6.8 percent, Fabian said. Fifty percent of the prison population is serving for offenses against people that include murder and aggravated assault. Seventeen percent are sex offenders. Wisconsin, in contrast, has 36 prisons and houses more than 22,000 prisoners with a $1.2 billion budget.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty has proposed a 1.7 percent increase in Corrections’ budget, a $3.5 million increase that focuses on bed costs and maintaining appropriate staffing levels. Legislators are working on reshaping the governor’s proposal. “I think you are getting a real good deal,” Fabian said at the hearing.
Copyright 2009 Star Tribune