Inmate Trades

CONNECTION

Like all states, Washington and Idaho routinely send inmates to prisons beyond their borders and take in prisoners from elsewhere.

Sometimes, it’s profitable. In the late 1980s, Washington had about 1,000 empty beds in its prison system because of new construction and a change in the way convicts were sentenced, Department of Corrections spokesman Veltry Johnson said. It accepted prisoners from Idaho, Oregon, Colorado and the District of Columbia, at $65 per day per inmate, and collected about $25 million over two years.

Because the state has a temporary cell shortage while it waits for two 500-bed prisons to be finished, it has 260 inmates housed in Colorado until next January.

It also exchanges problem inmates with other states, but only on certain conditions, Johnson said. They must be healthy and not be scheduled for release during their time in Washington.

Occasionally, an exchanged inmate has created problems, he said. “In those cases, that state came and picked up the inmate.”

Idaho has 18 of its prisoners in other states, and 15 out-of-state inmates in its prisons, said spokesman Mark Carnopis. That’s about average.

The swaps are made on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, the state swaps inmates who have similar convictions and sentences, Carnopis said. But it also exchanges inmates who are high escape risks with California, which has one of the highest security prisons in the nation. In such cases, it wouldn’t make sense to accept an inmate who is also a high escape risk, he said.