Associated Press
GILLETTE, Wyo. — For every person who moved to Wyoming from 1980 to 2013, 17 were locked up.
It’s a trend that has filled the state’s prisons, which now house 2,406 inmates — 24 more than their own operating recommendations call for.
If incarceration rates continue to rise, inmate population will eclipse the buildings designed to hold them.
The eventual clash between the number of incarcerated people and space to hold them has been building for decades and the backlog has spilled into courtrooms.
Recently, corrections officials updated the Joint Judiciary Interim Committee on potential options for dealing with the problem, many of which would put inmates out on the streets.
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Prison populations are driven by how many people are admitted to institutions, how long offenders stay there and how many inmates released from prison return, Wyoming Department of Corrections documents say.
The theory is that if these factors can be managed better, so too could the population.
While WDOC runs the prisons, it can’t change laws affecting the population. That falls to the Legislature.
Last November, the Joint Judiciary Committee tasked WDOC to find out why the state’s prisons are so packed. The Pew Charitable Trust and National Governor’s Association Center for Best Practices reviewed the state’s prisons.
It was a long time coming.
“We’ve always talked about the amount of people we have incarcerated,” state Sen. Michael Von Flatern, R-Gillette, said.
There are two solutions, WDOC officials concluded: Build to make room for more beds or expand alternatives.
When the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington was built in 2006, a section was left unfinished in case an expansion was needed. It has room for an additional 144 beds, WDOC Deputy Director Steve Lindly told the Gillette News Record (http://bit.ly/1EcnQzN).
On average, it costs $121 a day to house an inmate, Lindly said, a figure that puts Wyoming as the 11th most expensive state to house inmates.
Estimates put expanding the facility at $16 million, not including the yearly $9 million needed to run it.
Building a new prison would be even more expensive. When the Torrington facility was built, the estimated cost was $68 million. The only bid for the project came in at more than $125 million and that’s not accounting for inflation, according to The Associated Press.
The high price tag of the expansion option prompted officials to prefer alternative measures.
PEW’s solution, dubbed the Department of Justice Reinvestment initiative, has three goals: to improve public safety, hold offenders accountable and control corrections costs.
It recommends having departments and communities collaborate more, share data and increase probation and parole resources and training. While that may help, the review says progress also will take legislative reform.
WDOC’s priority is to prevent prisons from becoming overcrowded. It proposes to do this by limiting prison admission, duration and re-entry, while meeting the PEW standards.
Expanding upon those priorities, WDOC’s proposed wish list includes measures that create prison alternatives for low-risk offenders.
It includes laws calling for 90-day jail terms that provide substance abuse treatment options, laws that provide proportional penalties for technical violations of probation or parole such as failing a drug test and updating drug sentencing laws.
It also includes creating an alternative minimum sentence for inmates with no felonies or current, non-violent prisoners who behave and allowing the parole board to credit inmates for time served when a parolee is out on the street.
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The proposed changes are not revolutionary. Courts have been adhering to many of the recommendations for years, said District Judge John Perry of Gillette, who was appointed in October 2000.
It hasn’t slowed the caseloads. District Judge Catherine Rogers of Cheyenne said civil cases are now scheduled a year out. A similar wait exists in Campbell County.
After Laramie County, Gillette is part of the second busiest court district. Although the numbers are preliminary, the 6th Judicial District (consisting of Campbell, Crook and Weston counties) is about 1.2 judges short of what it needs, Perry said.
The courts try to balance acceptable results for those the judiciary system serves, while maintaining fiscal responsibility for the taxpayers, Perry said
“I can tell you that it is the exception rather than the rule that we send people to prison on first violation,” he said.
The alternative measures are not without consequences.
“If someone would’ve told me 15-plus years ago that I was going to have a probationer on their fifth revocation, I would’ve told them that they were absolutely nuts, that’s not going to happen,” Perry said.
Some of the proposed changes may prompt legislative debate, he said.
“Many of these changes — I have to tell you, as somebody that’s done this for a while now — I’m convinced by the science that some of these are a little hard to swallow, but it comes as a package,” Perry said.
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Wyoming has the 10th lowest crime rate in the nation, but for rates of incarceration, it’s on par with the national average — the inference being a higher proportion of people are being locked up for a low proportion of crime.
Perry said the issue started more than 30 years ago.
“In 1984, Wyoming was one of the first states to have truth in sentencing laws,” Perry said.
The law required offenders to serve their minimum sentence without parole. The change led to backlogs in the prisons and Perry said judges started to back away from it.
The problem continued and split sentencing, where inmates serve out a portion of their sentences in a county jail rather than prison and then attend supervised release, was introduced.
“The split sentence matter was a bill I sponsored in 1986 for Gov. (Ed) Herschler for exactly the problem that you’re facing,” said Perry, a former state senator serving Campbell and Johnson counties. “We didn’t have enough prison beds in Rawlins. We needed some additional options for people who weren’t quite ready for hard time.”
It wasn’t enough.
In 1995, a shortage of space was keenly felt, lasting for 11 years. During that stretch, the Wyoming Department of Corrections sent 400 to 600 inmates out-of-state to be housed, Lindly said.
In January 2006, the medium security facility in Torrington was completed. The state’s newest prison has 720 beds and solved the prison overpopulation problem, albeit temporarily.
But the inmate population kept rising — growth Lindly said wasn’t anticipated.
As of February, corrections officials began renting out beds in the jails of Goshen and Platte counties for female offenders. That added 50 beds.
The department also secured 100 beds with a therapeutic community facility in Casper that treats people suffering from substance abuse.
The Legislature previously looked into private for-profit prisons, Von Flatern said.
“Many years ago, we brought up the private business system and that was shot down quickly,” Von Flatern said. “The feeling is the whole idea of for-profit prisons is not going to happen in the state.”
After hearing stories of abuse and cutting corners, the notion was struck down largely for humanitarian reasons, he said.
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The Joint Judiciary Committee will meet in Cody in November to discuss the matter further.
A proposed legislative solution would reduce the number of people who go to prison, the time they stay there and their chance of returning.
From a fiscal standpoint, the measure would reduce costs, but critics could say the approach goes soft on crime.
Von Flatern said he doesn’t think the measure is excessively light and that more judicial discretion is needed.
“If that makes me soft on crime, I’m sorry, but we hired the judge to make that call,” he said.
Regardless of what’s done or isn’t, the system has run out of time, and Lindly said action needs to be taken.
“There are individuals that think the best way to improve public safety would be to improve incarcerations,” Lindly said. “The reality is, the prisons are largely full. The policymakers need to decide how to move forward.”