By Alva James-Johnson
Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
COLUMBUS, Ga. — Muscogee County Prison Warden Dwight Hamrick oversees the largest prison work camp in Georgia.
He manages a facility with more than 500 inmates and 114 employees.
Hamrick sat down with reporter Alva James-Johnson and talked about life at the prison and why he thinks the work program is beneficial to inmates and the community.
Here are excerpts from the interview, with the content and order of the questions edited slightly for length and clarity:
Tell me what life was like for you growing up?
I was born in Carrollton and lived in Bremen, Ga., which is north of there, until I was 10. My father delivered bread for Sunbeam Bread Company. He transferred to LaGrange. And my mother worked for Playtex, a company there. ... I think I was 12, 13 when she went on disability with a bad back. Then my father went into insurance with Liberty National Insurance Company.
I grew up (in LaGrange) and played every sport they had. I graduated from LaGrange High in ’74, then went on to sign a baseball scholarship at Chattahoochee Valley Community College here in Phenix City. Played a year there, then transferred to a four-year school in Milledgeville, which is Georgia College & State University. It’s in the same conference with Columbus State, and I played three years there. I was a four-year letterman in baseball in college and (played) semipro ball two years after that and was scouted by the Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati and Kansas City. And all three had the same report: “Boy can’t run.” I wasn’t fast enough. I had a lot of tools for the pros, but that just wasn’t one of them. So I didn’t make it in that, so I went to work with the Department of Corrections.
How did you get into corrections work?
I actually did an internship with Troup County Parks and Recreation Commission for about eight months and was hired on. I worked there for about eight months after I did my internship out of college. Long hours, short pay sent me to another direction. A fraternity buddy of mine in college was an activity therapy supervisor and gave me a call about a job opening with the Department of Corrections as a recreation supervisor at Men’s (State Prison). I went to the interview, got hired on and have been in corrections ever since.
Was it very disappointing when you didn’t get into pro baseball?
The only regret I have is that I didn’t go to the spring training and try to walk on. I left it up to scouts. …
So what was it about corrections work that attracted you?
Basically, back in those days, correctional recreation was exactly like a local recreation department. They had arts and crafts, they had music programs, team sports, special events. A prison is very much like a city within a fence. It’s got its own everything — chaplaincy program, counseling program, police department, chief of police. … The warden’s the mayor. It’s very much like a city within a fence. The rec department paid me double the salary that I was getting with Troup County rec department and cut my hours in half.
… The main reason that I got into corrections also was I felt like I might could make a difference to inmates. I was basically a coach, and sports kept me out of trouble for many years growing up. I’ve never had any kind of problems. And so I thought, well, I could make a difference in that direction.
But I’m sure it’s also somewhat of a dangerous job. Have you ever run into any life-threatening situations?
Yeah. How many do you want to hear about? … Let me tell you about the first day on the job. Scott State Prison has got three different buildings. … They gave me a radio, a set of keys, and said, “Run rec for this building.” Not a dorm, the building. I bet I had 600 convicts — back then we called them convicts — inmates, offenders, whatever you want to call them. They came out the door and I got a count of 400 and something people on the yard with me, a radio, a set of keys and one other officer.
I look around and I’m like, “Oh yeah. This is how it’s going to be, huh?” That was an eye-opener right there. They were all youthful offenders. They were ages 17 to 24 and they were bouncing off the wall — playing basketball, football, volleyball, softball. They got bats in their hands, I mean the whole nine yards. They had everything out there and there I was with a radio and a set of keys.
Let’s talk about this prison. How long have you been here?
I’ve been here since September 2011. I actually retired in ’09 from Rutledge State (Prison) and I was bored stiff. I took a part-time counseling job up at Harris County Prison. I was doing like Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 20 hours a week, had a four-day weekend all the time, and it gave me something to do. … Warden (Bill) Adamson, that was previous to me here, announced his retirement to the mayor on a Tuesday morning. She called Brian Owens, commissioner of the Department of Corrections, and asked him, “Hey, I need a warden like in the morning.” He knew I just had retired. I was living in Pine Mountain. So she made a call or two around to some of the higher-ups with the Department of Corrections. They finally found out I was at Harris County. And she gave me a call and said, “Hey, do you want to come be my interim warden? I got a warden retiring.” I said, “When?” She said, “In the morning.” I’m like, “In the morning? OK, OK. Let me think. OK, I’ll be there.” She said, “I’ll be there around 9:30 for a press conference.” I said, “I go to work at 8, ma’am.” So I showed up at 8 o’clock, she showed up later and we had a press conference and walked around and saw the place. And then I had to go before council and actually had to apply for the job when it was made available through budget. They hired me on effective Feb. 14. It was Valentine’s Day 2012.
Tell me about this prison.
Our main mission here is work. I know everybody’s heard that and I’ll go ahead and clear up the slave labor thing. Inmates want to work. Inmates do not want to be off. They don’t want to sit back in the dormitory and do nothing. It’s a chance for them to get out. They breathe the fresh air, learn a skill or expand on a skill they have. They come to us from Georgia Department of Corrections, already a lot of those with heavy equipment skills, auto mechanic skills. So we try to match the job to their skill. The No. 1 thing is to fill the positions we have, like the sanitation details. We run about 380-400 inmates out the back gate every day and they can also earn OJT (On the Job Training) certificates while they’re out there on detail. So that’s something for them to put in their hand when they leave here along with a GED — if they don’t have it, we can provide it if they want it.
… But a lot of inmates don’t want to take advantage of that. They have contraband issues. They have substance abuse issues, which we also provide some counseling programs that address that — Relapse Prevention and Thinking for Change and Motivation for Change, Moral Recognition Therapy. There are several programs we’ve added since I’ve been here.
Are you fully occupied right now?
… We have 528 state beds that were contracted with Georgia Department of Corrections and then 48 county beds, so 576 total beds for the facility. … We’re a little short, really, on both sides. We have 507 state so we’re about, I think, 21 short on the state side. And we have 22 county so we’re 26 short on county side.
Those county inmates are sentenced right out of the courts here. I don’t know if crime is down. That’s part of it. Part of it’s also alternative sentencing by judges and fast-track stuff going on down at downtown courts and the county jail. I think their numbers are down, too, so they’ve worked harder at getting inmates through the system and out — either out or to a state prison. I don’t know a whole lot about their operation. Mine’s big enough. I try to keep up with my own.
What kind of prisoners do you have here?
We’re medium-minimum security. … We have probably 50-something minimum security, that have done a lot of time, or came in with not a lot of time to do — one or the other. … It all depends on what the crime is and how much time they have to do.
What percentage of the inmates are here for drug-related crimes?
… Probably 40 percent, somewhere around there. We do have some that are aggravated assaults, armed robberies. … We don’t have any murderers. We don’t have any sex-offenders that are state. We do have some that are county, but they don’t go outside and work.
How many inmates participate in the GED program?
It’s offered to everyone that don’t have one. (We’ve) got 21 inmates enrolled in the GED program.
Out of 500 and something?
Out of 528 total. That’s not a large number. … But a lot have their high school diplomas, a lot have received the GED in state prison previously, incarcerated in other institutions before they came to us. We promote that as hard as we can and get as many as we can. Every inmate’s assigned a counselor, so every counselor has a case load. They run around 200 or so apiece, and there’s three counselors. They know who has the programs, who needs the programs, who needs assessment. That’s done on every inmate. … All of that combines with good behavior for early releases. So it’s an incentive for an inmate who doesn’t have a GED to get in the program, complete the program, and then the parole board is advised of it, and then when they make their decision they can genuinely say that the inmate has tried to better himself while incarcerated.
What indication do you have that the programs are making it easier for inmates to transition into society? Are they getting jobs when they get out?
When they get out, we don’t track anything with those guys, unless they’re on parole or probation, and that’s the probation officer’s job to determine who’s trying to better themselves and continue what they learned here or who’s going to come back to prison and commit crime.
What is the current recidivism rate?
… It’s pretty high, 26-27 percent. You always think you could better that, but it was 27 percent when I started in ’79, so we really haven’t gone anywhere. I think the times have changed and… there’s more problems, more crime on the street, less work ethic. Back in the ’70s, inmates worked hard and wanted to be on the job and that kind of thing. I see more younger inmates that are more into, “Well, what can you do for me?” rather than, “What can I give back to do for myself?”
I think part of that’s just the way things are now. Growing up, when I was a kid, I didn’t know there was a prison, never even thought about it. Ride your bike to school — can’t do that now, hardly, without running into some bully taking your bike or your lunch money.
There’s a lot of debate now about the incarceration rate here in the United States and how it compares to other countries. The U.S. accounts for 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants but about 25 percent of its prisoners. Why do you think that is?
… I think the way the laws (are) for one. … I’m going to sound like some drug advocate here, but you’re going to legalize marijuana, and it’s coming to a lot of states, but you got half the population locked away for drug offenses. … I think the laws dictate. We created the problem.
So do you think the “War on Drugs” was probably not the right approach?
The “War on Drugs” is fine. I think to lock everybody up for it is not. It’s not rectifying the problem. … We have marijuana possession back there regularly. It’s not like they’re addicted. … It’s a contraband issue across the state and it’s a contraband issue in all prisons in the nation. That and cellphones. …
You said earlier that the focus here is work and that some people might have a misunderstanding as to why that is. On the Muscogee County Jail website it says that “the most compelling reasons for our existence are revenue and custody of state and county offenders.” And I think that word “revenue” is what concerns a lot of people. Can you explain to me the revenue situation?
Inmates save the city around $22 million a year. It would take $17 (million) to replace them with people off the street to take theirs — it would take that much just for salary. Now the subsidy is what Georgia Department of Corrections pays us to house these inmates. You see, we take 528 out of their state prisons and they have an overcrowded situation and we assist them. Now, state prisons pay about $46 a day per inmate per day. They pay us $20 per day, per inmate, which computes to around $315,000 a month in revenue, which goes back to the general fund. I don’t get a penny of that, except when it comes back out in budget. I’m a small piece of the pie like all the other city department heads, but that adds up to about $3.5 million-$3.6 million a year, added to the $17 million to replace the inmate labor. So it’s around $22 million.
So doesn’t that create an incentive to keep the prison population high here in Muscogee County?
Well, sure. That’s not the only reason. The other reason is to teach them a work ethic so when they get back out on the street, they can get a job within the field we have trained them in, or created a work ethic for them in. And hopefully they’ll be productive people and not come back. That’s the flip side of it. It’s a win-win for them and us.
… We’re the only institution in the state where inmates are paid on some of the details. … Three dollars a day is nothing to us, but to an inmate that can add up. That may be the only spending money they have. They may not have money coming in from family members to go on their books so they could go to the store. But if they (work) two or three weeks, they can buy store goods out of there off their own account. And that comes (from) Public Works. Part of their budget pays the inmate $3 a day for sanitation details, golf course, the landfills. Every inmate that works there gets that payment. And we’re the only institution where they are paid.
And you are the largest work camp in the prison system here in Georgia, right?
Yes, ma’am. We’re the largest.
Some people in the community are concerned about safety. Why is it safe to have the prisoners out and working?
Well, it’s safe for more than one reason. One is they are low-risk criminals as far as inmates are concerned. They don’t have a lot of time to do. An inmate may have 30 years, he might have a life sentence, he may have two lives and 20 at the state pen as a close-security inmate. But when they’ve done their time there, and they come here, they’re on their way home. … All officers that supervise inmates are P.O.S.T. (Police Officer Standards and Training)-certified with the exception of the sanitation drivers that drive the big trash trucks. They come to a one-day orientation or one-day, in-service training annually. But the Parks and Rec officers, the ones that carry the weapons, all of those are full-blown P.O.S.T-certified. They do the same training that I do annually, which is 20 hours of in-service to include firearm (recertification).
Wasn’t there a case recently when someone escaped?
The last one was working in Riverdale Cemetery and the two city workers supervising the detail are not P.O.S.T-certified. … They were actually running a weed-eater and they had on a hat, ear protection and goggles. … They were actually working alongside the inmates. And the inmate just walked off the detail, crossed Victory (Drive), went down into the park and hijacked a vehicle from an elderly gentleman. I think he was 92. And, bless his heart, he tried to hang on to the vehicle as the inmate was trying to drive off with it so he got dragged a little down the parking lot.
How was it resolved?
The inmate had no plan. He drove for about half a mile and ditched the car at a hotel on Victory Drive, got out, left the car running and we found the car a couple hours later. … If he headed west to Alabama, he would have had to cross the river, and I knew he wasn’t going to do that. We knew he wasn’t in a vehicle because he had left it at the hotel. So we knew he was on foot somewhere. So we blanketed a perimeter from Victory to the Chattahoochee from South Lumpkin Road and back. We really had him inside that perimeter the whole time. And then I guess about 3 o’clock in the morning, I heard a radio call that he had walked up to a citizen’s house. … The guy answered the door and the inmate asked for a drink of water. He gave him a bottle of water and noticed he had on inmate clothing. … He dials 911, the inmate takes off. … The next morning about 6:45, thereabouts, he walked up to another house and said, “Call the police, I’m an escapee, I’m turning myself in.” We had been on top of him all night long and he had hurt his ankle jumping fences to avoid us during the night, and he couldn’t go anymore.
Gov. Nathan Deal has made prison reform a top priority for his administration. How do you feel about that?
I’ve got nearly 40 years in the business. We’ve had commissioners who were far to the right on security, far to the left on programs, and some in the middle who required very structured discipline to give (inmates) the programming that they need. This is right in line with that. I can’t speak for the governor, but I think what’s been told to us by the commissioner is we’re going to maintain safe secure facilities. But we want to do everything we can for those who want to take advantage of it, to curb the recidivism rate.