Director Cites Need For Prison Inmate Population Rising, Says Corrections Chief

Correction Director James Spalding laid out his defense of a new $49 million prison near Boise on Wednesday, gearing up to rebut criticism that the facility is not needed.

Spalding pointed out for the Board of Correction that while the current system has a maximum capacity of 3,250 male inmates with the opening of another 536 beds this month, the state has custody of nearly 3,700 men.

The relatively new woman’s prison in Pocatello has the same problem on a smaller scale.

And he said the six-month break in dramatic monthly increases in the prison population appears to be over. After net population declines in previous months, December showed an increase of 12.

Spalding also said that the inmate backup in county jails is building again and his records clerks are reporting that processing activity into the prison reception unit has picked up in recent weeks.

The backlog of inmates waiting in county jails until space opens up in a state facility had dropped below 190 late last year but was back up to nearly 250 on Jan. 1.

Projected growth over the next two years would add 900 more inmates to the population as the new 1,250-bed facility to be operated by Corrections Corp. of America opens as the 1990s end.

Based on all those figures, Spalding said, “we’re not asking for too many beds.”

More importantly, however, Spalding said he will emphasize to state lawmakers during the Jan. 16 hearing on the prison project that the actual capacity of existing facilities is less than 2,200 under a mid-1980’s federal court order on prison crowding.

The extra space was squeezed out by double-bunking all of the cells except those in the main facility, which was the focal point of the inmate lawsuit more than a decade ago. No one has yet to challenge the double-bunking decision in court.

The population press has created problems at the prison in Orofino, where nearly 500 inmates are being housed in space designed for 427. Eight inmates staged a mini-riot last July, causing $20,000 in damage.

Spalding said the leeway provided by the new prison will allow reducing the number of inmates in potentially volatile situations like that and open up options the board can seize to cope with overcrowding at the women’s prison and demands for new programs.

The remaining 167 of 300 inmates who have been housed at a private prison in Louisiana since early summer will be back in Idaho within two weeks, he told the board, and the contract with that facility terminated.

With their return, the state still will have 448 inmates in Minnesota and Texas along with the 250 backed up in county jails.