By David Unze & Kristi Marohn
St. Cloud Times, Minn.
ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Crowding in the state’s prisons has gotten so bad that the warden at the St. Cloud prison recently considered putting cots in areas of the facility that aren’t as secure as cells.
While Collin Gau didn’t have to take that step, he has on a short-term basis had to put prisoners with no record of discipline into segregation cells that typically are reserved for inmates with the worst behavior.
The St. Cloud prison isn’t alone. The Minnesota Department of Corrections’ prisons are full, and the agency is continuing a trend of housing more of its inmates in county jails. It’s why a state legislator on Friday held the first of what is expected to be several meetings about prison crowding.
The DOC is housing about 500 inmates in county jails, a number that has increased from 36 in 2011 and 324 in 2014. The agency has seen its spending to house those inmates in county jails grow from $8,971 in fiscal year 2012 to $7.9 million last fiscal year.
DOC projections show that, without changes, the agency will be short about 1,275 beds by 2022.
“We need the beds. We already need 500 beds, truth be told,” said Deputy Commissioner Terry Carlson. “And it’s just going to continue to grow.”
The Times interviewed Carlson on Thursday, the day before she and other DOC officials appeared before a Prison Population Task Force in St. Paul to discuss the prison crowding problem.
The DOC is asking the Legislature for $141.5 million to add 500 beds to the high-security prison in Rush City. It’s the third-ranked bonding request from the DOC for the next legislative session. The fourth-ranked DOC priority is for $5 million to add 60 beds at its Lino Lakes facility, which has medium-security and minimum-security units.
The second-ranked priority is for $19 million to complete the second phase of improvements to the St. Cloud prison’s intake area. The DOC’s top funding priority is $30 million for “asset preservation,” meaning general infrastructure repair and maintenance, Carlson said.
The growing population at a time when crime rates and arrest rates are decreasing is the result of increased, and in some cases mandatory, sentences for things such as being a felon in possession of a firearm, failure to register as a sex offender, felony DWIs and domestic violence convictions, Carlson said.
“We’re not judging whether or not those were good laws,” Carlson said. “It’s just the impact of them.”
While the DOC is asking for money for the Rush City expansion, it likely won’t be asking for money to add more cells in St. Cloud anytime soon. That’s because the age of the facility makes expansion costly and difficult. There also isn’t enough dining, recreation and visiting space to add beds without creating security and safety concerns.
The cost of new construction, either on the prison site or across Minnesota Highway 301, is cost-prohibitive, Gau said. A feasibility study put the cost at $325 million to add a facility across Highway 301 that would add 1,200 beds.
“Somebody might say that we need the beds bad enough to do it,” Gaus said. “I doubt that, but it could. You never say never in this business.”
That means Gau faces daily challenges about how to house an ever-changing population. Because St. Cloud is the intake, evaluation and orientation facility where all male inmates come right after being sentenced, he has no idea how many inmates will arrive on a given day or when.
He won’t reduce the time it takes to do a thorough intake evaluation because that could hurt the ability to help the inmates get the programming they need.
“I wouldn’t want to even consider doing that, because what we do here is so valuable in terms of providing the offender the right place and the right programming,” he said. “And if we can’t do our job thoroughly and completely, then we’re not serving public safety.”
So he has to maintain a list of inmates who have completed orientation and evaluation and are ready to be moved on short notice to open beds at another facility to open beds for incoming inmates.
Some solutions the DOC is looking at, in addition to the Rush City and Lino Lakes expansions, are expanding programs like Challenge Incarceration Program, work release programs, electronic monitoring and possibly not sending inmates who violate conditions of their release back to prison. The DOC also is looking at where it could add minimum-security units outside secure prison perimeters.
“There’s nothing firm on that yet,” Carlson said.
At Friday’s meeting, members of the task force debated whether expanding prisons makes sense, or whether lawmakers should be looking at the driving factors contributing to the increase in prison population.
Minnesota has long been a leader in promoting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism, and historically has had one of the lowest incarceration rates in the nation, said Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, the task force’s chairman.
In 2014, Minnesota’s imprisonment rate was 194 out of 100,000 residents, compared to a U.S. rate of 471.
However, while many states’ prison population has been on the decline, Minnesota’s increased 31 percent between 2003 and 2013 — the fifth-fastest growth rate in the nation.
“At a time when crime rates are low and the rest of the nation is more likely to look to alternatives to imprisonment, I believe Minnesota can do better,” Latz said.
Sentencing practices in Minnesota result in 93 percent of felons serving time in prison or jail. Changes like the creation of the felony DWI in 2002 and tougher penalties for domestic violence in the mid 2000s created more felons.
The task force discussed a variety of potential solutions to the space crunch, including revisiting sentencing guidelines. They also discussed the possibility of the Department of Corrections leasing an empty former private prison in Appleton that closed in 2010.
The task force plans to meet several more times before the Legislature convenes in March.