Officials Battle Critics Over Prison Reform

State prison officials and critics sparred Tuesday over tough new legislation to require inmates to work full time or be in school or training - and to use inmate privileges like TV and weightrooms as incentives.

Backers and foes of the sweeping legislation sharply differed over the price tag. The Lowry administration says it would cost taxpayers an extra $20 million, but Republican backers said it should save at least that much.

The state Department of Corrections and its director, Chase Riveland, came in for grilling. King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, a potential GOP candidate for governor, called the agency “an entrenched bureaucracy devoid of new ideas” and resistant to change.

House Corrections Chairwoman Ida Ballasiotes, R-Mercer Island, agreed: “They give you eight reasons from Sunday why they can’t do something. The Legislature and the public want changes. They want inmates to be working. The reluctance is in the Department of Corrections.”

Her committee opened hearings on HB2010, which would cut costs in the department, curtail inmate privileges, require prisoners pay a $3 for every doctor’s visit, and require inmates to have a job or go to school full time.

The plan also bans inmates from possessing obscene, sexually explicit or violent material.

The bill says inmates would have to be in school or working in order to have TV, recreation privileges or family visitation weekends.

It would mandate a 20 percent cutback in management and a 75 percent cut in recreation aides. It would require use of inmate labor for all new prison construction. Inmates with prison industries jobs would have to pay 10 percent of their wages to victims of their crimes.

Maleng told the panel the message of the last election is “people think the country is off-track. They want a new direction and rediscovery of some old values, such as the work ethic and education.”

The prison system has dragged its feet on both schooling and inmate jobs, as it has with every necessary reform in recent years, Maleng said.

“The bottom line is that if the Legislature doesn’t provide the leadership, we’re not going to have reform,” he said.

Dave LaCourse, campaign director for the “Three Strikes, You’re Out” and the “Hard Time for Armed Crimes” initiatives, said the public is demanding that inmates work and have a basic education “so these people have skills other than sticking people up with a gun.”

Tom Rolfs, director of the Bureau of Prisons, said the agency is willing to consider new legislative mandates, but that is has to fit into the reality of the budget, staff levels, program space, and whether the prisons can develop thousands of meaningful new jobs and not compete with the private sector.

Rolfs said in an interview that “it’s a laudable goal to have everyone in school or a full-time prison job, “but it will be expensive.

“About 67 percent of the 11,000 inmates are in full-time work or school or a combination of both, and we are talking about thousands of new slots.

“I don’t define picking up cigarette butts as meaningful work with realworld application,” he said.

He also objected to tying inmate privileges to their work or schooling.

A fiscal note released by the Democrats said the bill’s education and jobs provisions alone would cost nearly $40 million, largely because the prisons would have to hire 205 new employees to provide the programs. That would be offset by reduction in overtime and other costs, leaving a net price tag of $20.3 million.