Gang violence cramps limited prison space

BOISE – A recent rise in prison gang violence has forced the Department of Correction to add more solitary cells to the facility that houses Idaho’s most-dangerous inmates, worsening overcrowding that’s already resulted in 550 inmates being sent to private lockups thousands of miles away.

Much of the recent violence is between rival Hispanic gangs that some inmates join for protection, prison operations chief Pam Sonnen said Wednesday.

Last week, her agency began converting 64 double cells at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution south of Boise into “administrative segregation” units for single prisoners who have broken rules and must be isolated. The state prison system simultaneously loses 64 beds, meaning even more inmates will be sent more quickly elsewhere.

In September, 120 inmates were shipped to Oklahoma; in December, another 120 will go to the same facility, run by private prison operator Correction Corporation of America.

“We have had an increase in gang activity that has resulted in an increase in assaults on inmates, an increase in requests for protective custody, an increase in assaults on staff and an increase in disruptions,” Sonnen said. “Unless you keep the leadership separated, they’re out recruiting.”

The Legislature in January is expected to debate whether Idaho should build a large new prison itself or allow a private prison company to do it. Idaho wants to bring inmates sent to Texas and Oklahoma back home, as well as accommodate a population of 7,400 that’s growing by 7 percent a year.

Since they were first sent elsewhere in 2005, Idaho inmates have been moved twice at facilities in Texas after reports of abuse by guards. Prison Director Brent Reinke conceded earlier this year that Idaho didn’t adequately monitor its out-of-state inmates, leading to miserable conditions. The mother of an Idaho inmate who killed himself filed a $500,000 negligence claim against Idaho.

Still, problems aren’t confined to Idaho’s out-of-state inmates, and that’s what has spurred the need for more segregation cells.

Gang members now make up just 8 percent of Idaho’s roughly 20,000 inmates, probationers and parolees, Reinke said in an October mailing to state lawmakers. But members of these illegal groups committed 80 percent of violent incidents at prisons in Idaho since April, according to the prison agency.

In particular, recent violence has flared between rival “Norteños” and “Sureños” gangs, Idaho officials said.

Norteño and Sureño gang distinctions emerged 30 years ago as Hispanic street gang members staked out turf in Northern and Southern California, Malcolm Klein, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Social Science Research Institute in Los Angeles, told the Associated Press.

In addition to Norteños and Sureños, Idaho inmates also join the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. These groups promise some protection in the insecure world behind bars, Klein said.

But none of these violent gang members is among inmates that Idaho ships out to ease overcrowding, Sonnen said.

Instead, Idaho has been sending its more easily managed, lower-risk offenders, including many sex offenders, to for-profit lockups in other states, because they are the only ones private prison companies will accept.

A consequence has been that inmates left in Idaho are generally more dangerous, meaning more inmates must be housed by themselves, she said.