By Karen Langley
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — Parents of Concord prisoners spoke yesterday against a proposal to cut state spending by sending inmates to private facilities, while the head of corrections told lawmakers the plan would increase costs.
Many of the parents who attended yesterday’s hearing before the Senate Finance Committee said they feared their children would be sent to another state.
Dorothy Giddens of Jaffrey said she doesn’t have the money to travel, and she does not know what she or her son would do if they could no longer see each other.
“I live for those visits with him,” she said. “If he’s in a faraway state, there’s no way I’d ever be able to visit him again, and the thought of that is just heart-wrenching.”
Sen. Chuck Morse, chairman of the Finance Committee, has proposed relocating up to 600 inmates from the state prison in Concord, which houses 1,356 prisoners. Morse, a Salem Republican, told committee members yesterday that the state would save $1 million a year for every 100 prisoners it moves from state to private housing. His proposal would require the department to save $10.5 million over the next two years and use any additional savings to support inmates paroled under the mandatory early release law.
Senate budget writers are trying to avoid making the Department of Corrections the only major state agency to see its funding rise in the upcoming biennium. The department spent nearly $98 million in general funds last year, and Morse said it wouldthis year having spent $100 million in general funds. At the beginning of the budget process, Gov. John Lynch proposed giving the department $108 million in general funds next year and $109 million in 2013.
When the House proposed a budget of $105 million each year, Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn said the cuts would force him to lay off 45 people and close the state prison in Berlin. In addition to directing Wrenn to privatize housing for a portion of the Concord prison population, the proposal prohibits him from closing the Berlin prison. Morse has said the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility is as financially efficient as any private prison.
“The commissioner can achieve this level of savings any way he sees fit,” Morse said. “This is one tool that we’re offering him to get to a certain point.”
Morse said he arrived at the $6 million in annual savings by comparing the $32,000 average annual cost of housing New Hampshire state prisoners to the $63 daily fee Vermont pays to house inmates in private prisons.
But corrections Commissioner William Wrenn insisted the plan would cost more than housing the inmates in Concord. Far from saving millions each year, Wrenn said the plan would increase costs by $5 million to $7 million a year as the department paid to house 600 inmates elsewhere while continuing to pay the fixed costs of operating the Concord prison. The direct cost of housing an inmate in the state system is $61 a day, said Bob Mullen, director of administration in the Department of Corrections.
Asked by committee Vice Chairman Bob Odell where else he could find savings, Wrenn said he didn’t have an answer. He said he had held private discussions with Morse but was not able to share the specifics, though he indicated they had talked about giving Wrenn the discretion to find savings beyond staff salaries.
“I don’t feel this is our doing,” Wrenn said. “So if this was part of the plan to save money, and I tell you it’s not going to work because it’s going to cost money, why do I then have to find a way to come up with that money?”
Odell said the Finance Committee had already voted on the budgets of dozens of agencies whose heads had found ways to cut spending in the next two years.
While the officials talked about the financial implications of the plan, about a dozen parents and advocates of inmates, as well as a few corrections officers, waited their turn to speak. Many parents, such as Jeanne Caron of Hudson, said they visit their sons in prison every week. Caron, who introduced herself as “the mother of a much-loved Concord, New Hampshire, inmate,” said that sending inmates to private facilities would create a great hardship for prisoners and families alike.
“You, as my elected officials, do not have the right or authority to send my son away to a distant state so I may not visit him or encourage him as often as if he were nearby,” Caron said.
Parents and advocates said inmates who lack family support are less likely to rehabilitate themselves and become productive citizens. Deane Morrison, an executive at Concord Hospital, said he has visited his son hundreds of times during seven years of incarceration. Morrison said the prison system has turned his son’s life around, giving him the opportunity to earn a GED and an associate degree.
“I am a conservative Republican myself,” Morrison said. “I believe people should be responsible for themselves as much as possible. But I also think we have a duty as a state to support our citizens and provide opportunities for second chances.”
Lawmakers said the committee would vote tomorrow on the corrections budget.
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