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| Deputy commissioner says Alaska prisons need more successes |
| By newsminer.com - Reba Lean |
| Published: 05/18/2012 |
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FAIRBANKS — What do you talk about over coffee with friends — Alaska’s prison system? Carmen Gutierrez, deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections, is willing to bet not. “Nobody likes talking about this,” she said during a talk on the topic at the Rabinowitz Courthouse Thursday with a group of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute students. If the taboo was lifted, Gutierrez believes, the current problems in the state’s corrections system — overpopulation, costliness, re-entry to society, rehabilitation funding — could be addressed and perhaps solved. The state’s Goose Creek Correctional Center is opening soon southwest of Wasilla. It will provide an additional 1,536 beds for inmates and eliminate the Alaska’s out-of-state prison population. At the same time, the number of inmates in Alaska grows 3 percent each year, and Gutierrez said in-state prisons will be at full capacity again in 2016. An average inmate with essential health care and mental health treatments costs the state $135 per day or $49,000 per year. The state has about 6,000 offenders in custody. Harder to swallow could be the fact that two out of three released inmates return to custody. “We’re at a crossroads,” Gutierrez explained to the group of about 20 people. “If 66 percent of our people come back, I respectfully submit this is a costly failure.” Gutierrez said the failure begins after prisoners go through as much rehabilitation as they can during their prison time and are released back into their communities. They are supposed to have their “second chance,” but it doesn’t always work out that way. Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Deputy commissioner says Alaska prisons need more successes Read More. |
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