State Prison Officials Doubling Up Inmates

Facing a prison population rising more than twice as fast as projected while county jail space dries up, Corrections Director James Spalding will begin double celling inmates in the maximum security prison this week.

It is the first time the Department of Correction has resorted to the emergency measure since the 1986 settlement of a federal lawsuit that imposed restrictions on inmate conditions at the main prison. That decree also included a stern warning against attempting to circumvent the spirit of the decree in other facilities.

Double bunks in the 96 maximum security cells are just the start of a plan to double-bunk a total of 401 cells in prison facilities around the state by the end of the year. The final 118 additional beds would be at the main prison, which was the subject of the 1986 federal decree.

But the Board of Correction is considering a direct challenge to the 1986 decree in an attempt to get its restrictive provisions lifted.

“That is not the reality in prisons throughout the country,” Spalding said. He pointed out that violence in the prison system is substantially less than it was a decade ago - one of the key issues that prompted the decree.

Because of those restrictions, the state had 345 inmates backed up in county jail cells on Wednesday, and the number of inmates under state jurisdiction was approaching 3,100. The inmate count has been rising at an average of 29 a month, and the system population is up nearly 500 in the past 18 months.

“We’re flying above the line pretty significantly,” Spalding told the board.

Even with a huge construction program planned over the next three years, Spalding said the 650 new inmate beds it will produce are only enough to keep pace, not reduce the state inmates backlogged in county jails.