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| ACLU calls for more state prisons |
| By The Spokesman Review |
| Published: 06/26/2006 |
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BOISE, ID - Continuing problems with a private Texas prison that's housing hundreds of Idaho's overflow inmates have even the head of the Idaho ACLU calling for Idaho to build more prisons. "Bottom line, we probably have to immediately start thinking about building more prisons in Idaho which is a terrible thing for an ACLU activist to say," said Jack Van Valkenburgh, head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho. "I want my money going to schools, I don't want it going for prisons. But you've got to provide minimally adequate care." Van Valkenburgh noted that he favors sentencing reform and more drug treatment as "the way to solve the prison problem," but said Idaho is risking more crime in the future by sending its inmates to facilities like the Newton County Correctional Center in Texas. "My sense is the mentality of this facility doesn't have rehabilitation and reintegration into society as a goal." Ninety-five percent of Idaho inmates eventually will be released back into Idaho communities. State Correction Director Tom Beauclair last year asked lawmakers to approve $160 million worth of new prison construction, providing 2,200 more beds. They instead approved a new 400-bed treatment center, plus a $16 million, 300-bed expansion of the Idaho Correctional Center south of Boise. Now, Beauclair is working on a request for more than $300 million in new prison construction to present to next year's Legislature. "We need funding for a 1,500-bed prison, which would be full by the time it's built that's the reality we face," Beauclair said. That new prison alone would cost in the neighborhood of $100 million. "They do not come cheap." Idaho now has more than 400 inmates at the Newton County center, a former county jail that's now a private prison run by GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut Corp. In less than three months, there have been two escapes; three prison employees disciplined after an incident in which they roughed up and sprayed pepper spray on six Idaho inmates; and a demonstration in which 85 Idaho inmates refused to return to their cells for hours in protest over conditions at the facility. A public records request to the Idaho Department of Corrections yielded a stack of complaints about the Texas lockup from inmates and their families. "We are locked in these windowless rooms for 20+ a day," one inmate wrote. "Many inmates are spending 22 hours a day on their bunks." Others complained of inattentive or abusive officers, cold food, lack of recreation and programs, and fivefold increases in the cost to families for phone calls to inmates. "This jail is so dirty and unsafe," one inmate wrote. |
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