Washington State Opens Environmentally-Friendly Control Unit

by Matt Clarke, Prison Legal News

In October 2007, the Monroe Correctional Complex (MCC), Washington
State's largest prison, opened the first prison building in
Washington State to be certified as "green" by the U.S. Green
Building Council. The unit, a new segregation building with 200
bunks, consists of a 100-bunk Intensive Management Unit (IMU) for
prisoners who are placed there at the whim of prison officials for
indefinite, long term stays and a 100-bunk unit for prisoners
spending a shorter period in segregation.

At 2,500-bunks, not including the new segregation building, MCC is
Washington State's largest prison. Located 45 minutes from Seattle,
overcrowding has long been an issue at MCC. Relatives of prisoners
claim that the crowded conditions led to violence, including the
murder of several prisoners.

The new segregation building cost $39.5 million. The price tag
included a rainwater collection system for toilet-flushing water and
low energy lighting.

The Washington State Legislature passed state laws requiring that new
prisons be energy efficient even though construction costs of such
prisons are higher than those of conventional prisons. Thus, the new
"green-rated" 2,048-bunk prison unit at Coyote Ridge will cost $254
million. However, according to Washington Department of Corrections
(DOC) officials, the extra cost will pay for itself in the long run
by reducing operating costs. Of course, this assumes things turn out
as planned. PLN has previously reported on the shoddy construction of
other Washington state prisons that resulted in millions of dollars
of repairs.

"It costs a little bit more to build," said David Jansen, head of the
DOC?s capital programs. "But over the life of the building it ends up
costing less" in utilities and maintenance costs.

The new control unit follows the typical pattern of other Intensive
Management Units in Washington state. Prisoners are locked in their
8-by-12-foot cells 24-hours a day, with a nominal one hour of
?recreation? outside the cell five days a week. They are allowed
15-minute showers three times a week. Prisoners are observed 24 hours
a day from an elevated, hi-tech control room and the 172 security
cameras, placed throughout the 77,000-square-foot building. Prisoners
are limited to six months in the segregation unit, but can stay in
IMU indefinitely.
The only difference in how the two are run is that IMU prisoners are
allowed a TV and a radio.

Allison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, described
solitary confinement as ?cruel and unusual punishment.?

?Solitary confinement has the obvious effect of reducing social
contacts between offenders ... and can have lasting psychological
effects on human beings,? according to Parker. ?It should be a
measure of last resort.?

Unfortunately the DOC and many other prison systems, use solitary
confinement as the preferred option for prisoners who don?t kowtow to
the system. In addition to confining some incorrigibly violent or
vulnerable prisoners, it is often used to discourage prisoner
journalists and jailhouse lawyers from exposing the evil inherent in
the American way of imprisonment. PLN editor Paul Wright observed
that during his imprisonment he wound up in many of Washington
state?s IMUs in retaliation for his writing and litigation. ?Built at
great expense, Washington fills its IMUs with prisoners accused of
minor offenses and the mentally ill,? Wright said. This is the
seventh 100 cell IMU Washington has built since 1984 when it opened
its first one. Likewise, in many states costly prison expansion
project are touted while inexpensive rehabilitation programs languish
underfunded.

Washington State is currently in the midst of a $500 million prison
expansion program which will result in new units being built at
Coyote Ridge Corrections Center, the Washington State Penitentiary,
Larch Corrections Center, Cedar Creek Corrections Center, Airway
Heights Corrections Center and Mission Creed women?s prison. The
3,500-bunk expansion program is scheduled for completion by 2009.
Despite the program, DOC officials predict a 4,000-bunk deficit
within a decade.

?We don?t think you can outbuild the inmate population,? said
assistant deputy of prison departments Mike Kenney. ?It?s kind of a
?Field of Dreams? syndrome.?

According to Kenney, a better solution is the $25 million re-entry
program tailored to reduce recidivism.

?The whole purpose of re-entry is to turn back the tide so we don?t
keep building new prisons,? said Kenny. ?We don?t believe that
building is a long-term solution.?

Nice words, retort prisoner advocates, but put your money where your
mouth is instead of funding recidivism reduction programs at 1/20th
the rate of construction projects funding.

?They do these little piecemeal things,? said An Kohn, advocate for
improved educational, and transitional housing programs. ?It?s
ridiculous, and it comes out of cowardice. All of these legislators
are just scared to death at being labeled soft on crime.?

Unfortunately, whereas the legislature seems perfectly capable of
understanding long-term payoffs when it comes to green building
construction, it seems to lose that long-term perspective when
rehabilitation programs are proposed. The greenest prison is an empty
one. However, until law-making bodies throughout the country come to
value and appreciate the practicality of rehabilitation programs, we
are likely to continue with record-breaking prison populations and
prison-building booms. The building of ?green prisons? also
illustrates how easily co-opted the rhetoric of environmentalism is
for destructive and repressive purposes.

Sources: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Times