By Corrections1 Staff
SEATTLE — Job cuts at the Washington state Department of Corrections have begun to take a toll on officers and their families.
Faced with furloughs and dwindling staff, corrections officers like Doug Nichols, who works at the Monroe Correctional Complex and whose wife was interviewed for a recent HeraldNet article, have grown deeply uncomfortable with the cuts being made to corrections budgets in their state.
They have good reason to be anxious. Last September Washington Governor Chris Gregoire ordered state agencies, including corrections, to cut 6.3 percent of their spending, the HeraldNet article said.
The budget cuts have forced Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail to trim the already lean corrections budget even further, translating into fewer staff watching over more inmates. “I’ve been saying the moves we have made do increase risk. It makes us all a little bit nervous,” Vail told HeraldNet.
Vail has many hard decisions to make. He must trim $53 million from the corrections budget to meet the governor’s reduction goal.
And it was announced just last Friday that Washington plans to close the McNeil Island Corrections Center on April 1, 2011 — the third Washington DOC prison to close in the past year, according to a recent Seattle Times article.
Around 500 inmates at the prison will be spread to the remaining 12 institutions in the state.
Many of the cuts being made include staff for prisoner recreation programs. This may appease some who are calling for a reduction of spending on inmates, but administrators say these cuts will inevitably make the prisons more dangerous.
Tracey Thompson, a representative for a union that represents 6,000 corrections workers across all Washington prisons, told HeraldNet, “Without these programs to occupy their time the inmates will be antsy, angry and irritable and will take it out on each other and the workers.”
That’s a grim prediction for officers to face.