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| Idaho Inmates on the Move Again |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 03/20/2006 |
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An additional 150 Idaho inmates have been sent to an out-of-state prison, this time to the Newton County Correctional Center in Newton, Texas, officials announced last week. Their arrival in Texas brings to 452 the total number of inmates sent from Idaho's overcrowded prisons to out-of-state facilities in recent months. About 300 inmates are at the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn., but they will likely be transferred to the Texas facility as well, Correction Department officials said, because Minnesota wants the room for its own prisoners. Idaho's prisons have been overcrowded for years, with state officials making do by simply adding more bunks to cells and creating outdoor prison camps. But last October, U.S. District Judge James Fitzgerald agreed with an inmate lawsuit that the conditions were "dehumanizing" and ordered the state to house the overflow out of state. The judge ordered 200 beds removed from state prisons, ordered that no inmates be housed in day rooms or other non-cell areas, and that no inmate be required to sleep on a mattress on the floor. Other efforts are in the works to ease crowding in Idaho, but they won't solve the problem, Department of Correction spokeswoman Melinda O'Malley Keckler said. The state is planning a new 300-bed, $16 million facility at the Idaho Correctional Center south of Boise, plus a 400-bed, privately run substance-abuse treatment center designed to serve as an alternative to sending addicted parolees back to prison. It's not yet clear when those facilities will be open, she said. “By the end of June we'll have 500 inmates out of state, with another transport expected sometime this summer,” O'Malley Keckler said. “Even with the added beds, if no other actions are taken, we anticipate that by the end of the year 2010 we will have 1,400 offenders out-of-state.” That means more costs for Idaho, she said. It costs about $48 per inmate per day to keep offenders in Idaho's prisons, compared to about $53 a day in the Minnesota facility or $51 a day at the Texas prison. About 1,500 new inmates are expected to be added to the state's prison system before 2008, according to the Idaho Legislative Services Office. The number of Idaho inmates has doubled since 1996 to roughly 7,000. The number of adults on probation and parole has also increased over the past decade, leading to a forecast growth rate for the entire system of about 7 percent a year, according to state numbers. |
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