New Management Cuts Costs At Jail

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By Santa Fe New Mexican

Published: 10/23/2002

San Miguel County Detention Center inmates adjusted to a few changes behind bars this summer: all smoking was banned, the food portions are smaller and prisoners have to buy their own stamps unless they qualify as indigent.
Those are just a few of the changes made by Texas-based Correctional Systems Inc., the company hired by the County Commission in July to manage the beleaguered 142-bed facility.
New jail administrator Charles W. 'Chuck' Ala said he thought the smoking ban would upset the inmates; instead, to his surprise, it was the stamp issue that almost caused a small-scale jail rebellion.
Ala is new to New Mexico, but not to managing prisons. He retired this summer after working for 20 years with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
He spent half that time in Houston overseeing the private contracts for 10 county jails, eight halfway houses, a juvenile detention center, and a Texas death-row facility.
While the San Miguel facility is tiny compared to other prisons Ala has worked with, he said the types of inmates are the same. 'We have the whole gamut of prisoners here,' he said during a recent tour of the detention center. 'We have misdemeanors and parole violations to murderers and sex offenders.'
Managing a prison, small or large, requires some of the same philosophy, Ala said. Listen to inmates, address their complaints and situations will stay calm. 'It is not like they're trying to run the jail,' Ala said. 'They have legitimate needs.'
'The key to this thing is communication,' he said. 'If you talk to them and provide for their basic needs, you won't have a problem.'
The San Miguel Detention Center was suffering from several problems when CSI took over in July. It was a financial drain on the county budget, taking almost $1 million out of the general fund last year. County commissioners and County Manager Les Montoya regularly received letters from inmates and their families about jail conditions - some legitimate, some not. In April, four prisoners escaped through the roof - at the same spot three inmates escaped in 1999.
In early July, Taos County Manager Robert Dale Morrison called detention-center conditions unsafe and unsanitary after making an unannounced visit there to investigate prisoner complaints.
Morrison berated the county over the detention center's management in a meeting with Montoya, Ala and county commissioners, and then threatened to remove all the Taos County prisoners. Taos County now sends less than half its usual number of prisoners to San Miguel, Montoya said. 'They used to have 13 to 15 prisoners per day here. Now they have four to five per day,' he said.
CSI sent inspectors in May who found a lack of basic hygiene items and cleaning supplies for prisoners, a dearth of uniforms and a facility badly in need of basic repair work. 'The inmates' basic needs were barely being taken care of,' Ala said.
Orderly Henry 'Hank' Bustos, an inmate at the detention center for the last nine months, agrees. 'Before we wouldn't get our hygiene items or cleaning supplies for a week or two. Inmates would run out of stuff like toilet paper,' Bustos said.
CSI found few detention staff members were trained in first aid or CPR. Four air conditioners were broken, the washing machine and dryer were broken, the walls needed painting and inmates had burned holes in some of their plastic cell windows with cigarette lighters.
In a Sept. 25 letter to the county, CSI President John R. Forren lists a variety of accomplishments at the center from a daily morning inspection by the administrator to daily showers and regular recreation for the inmates.
Ala said most of the staff is now trained in first aid and CPR. The staff includes two doctors and four nurses.
Keeping trained staff on the 31-person payroll is no small feat with an annual turnover rate of more than 50 percent.
With a first progress report in hand, Montoya is cautiously optimistic.
'We're pleased with what we're seeing so far,' he said on a recent visit to the jail. Montoya and the commissioners visit the jail every month.
Bustos said the jail is cleaner now, and conditions are better for the most part. He said one problem is that the inmates now have to pay for their own medications, unless they qualify as indigent.
While most of the prisoners are men, the detention center houses a handful of female inmates. Josie Chavez, 39, has been in and out of the facility several times. She said things have improved greatly in the women's section and the jail is cleaner overall.
Ala's wife, Leslie Ala, is the new grievance officer. 'Mrs. Ala has at least tried to talk to us,' Chavez said. 'At least they listen to our grievances.'
Some of the inmates still complained during a recent visit - they don't understand why their food portions are smaller, why they have to buy their own stamps and why they don't get to talk to their attorneys every week. They wish there was some place to puff a cigarette now and then. The inmates in D-pod complain they haven't had lights in their cell block eight months.
Ala said a lack of staff has made it hard to ensure each prisoner gets to talk to his or her attorney each week, an issue he said he's trying to resolve. He said D-pod's lights have been out since the inmates tore out the electric wires; it is on his prison fix-it list.
He agreed the food portions are smaller, but still within federal guidelines. That and the stamps are two cost-saving measures CSI is attempting to provide the county.
Ala said the facility was spending $6 a day per prisoner for food, and piling the grub on disposable containers when he arrived. 'Food costs should run between $3 and $3.75 per day,' he said.
Montoya said CSI agreed to cap the cost of managing the jail when it accepted the contract. The county budgeted $1.8 million to operate the facility this year, the same amount as 2001. Half that money comes from state and federal funds, and from other counties that pay to house some of their inmates in the San Miguel County Detention Center. The other half came from the county's general fund.
'Worst-case scenario, we're going to pay what we did last year, about $1 million out of the general fund,' Montoya said.
In the best-case scenario under the new management contract, the county could save up to $600,000, Montoya estimates.
Reaching that scenario in part relies on bringing more 'paying prisoners' into the detention center. About 122 prisoners per day are from San Miguel County. That leaves only 18 beds for prisoners from other counties that contract to pay San Miguel a daily fee. 'That's not a lot of available beds to market,' Montoya said. 'Somehow, we need to reduce the number of local prisoners.'
Ala is overseeing the renovation of a former storage trailer next to the jail into a 24-bed facility for work-release and minimum-security prisoners. When completed, it will free up 24 beds at the detention center for higher-risk inmates.
Ala also is working out a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to temporarily house illegal immigrants as they are deported. He will meet with U.S. Marshals later this week to discuss housing federal prisoners. Both measures could bring more money into the detention center.
Montoya sees the company's priorities as securing the detention center, modifying it and marketing it.
Statewide, Montoya said, there is concern from counties that the state isn't paying a fair share to house state prisoners. The New Mexico Association of Counties will lobby legislators on the issue in the next session, he said. 'We're not getting what we should in state subsidies to house state prisoners,' Montoya said.

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