07/20/2008

Associated Press

Washington is starting to bring back the prisoners who have been serving their terms out of state.

Prison overcrowding has sent more than 1,000 Washington inmates in out-of-state facilities for about six years. State prison officials says the first group of 61 inmates was brought back to the state in June.

There are 1,076 Washington inmates being held at four privately run prisons in Minnesota, Arizona and Oklahoma.

Many will return in early 2009 as the state begins to open more than 2,000 new prison beds at the Coyote Ridge prison in Eastern Washington. State officials say all the out-of-state inmates are expected back in Washington by the end of 2009.

The state doesn't expect to send any additional inmates out of states, said Jim Thatcher, superintendent of out-of-state prisons and jails for the state Department of Corrections.

The prisoners who were brought back to Washington in June average 12 to 14 months left on their sentences. They were brought back to prepare for their release and some will be sent to work-release centers.

Thatcher said state officials underestimated the need for more prison beds, making it necessary to send inmates out of state for longer periods than first anticipated.

The shortage of prison beds was further worsened by the surge of people who were released from prison but were sent back because they violated terms of their release. Most of them are still housed in county jails for 30 to 60 days, but prison officials cleared out space to house 270 such violators at the Monroe Correctional Complex in Snohomish County.

Thatcher said the state won't need all of those beds because he's negotiating to rent more beds at the King County Jail and because the state now can send more inmates to drug treatment instead of back to prison.

Those extra beds at Monroe are part of the reason Washington can bring some of its out-of-state inmates back, he said.

Washington oversees a total of 18,551 inmates in prison — 15,905 at 15 Washington prisons and 613 in one of the state's 16 work-release centers. The rest are either in out-of-state prisons or in county jail beds that the state is renting. Thatcher said prison officials generally open a new prison one wing at a time as they have enough staff on hand.

"When (the rest of the inmates) do come back, we'll probably bring a plane-load at a time, roughly 100 at a time," he said. They will be distributed throughout the Washington prison system, not just at Coyote Ridge, he said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, the Legislature and prison officials are hoping to avoid building at least one $250 million prison in the future by beefing up offender programs school, drug treatment, job hunting that will reduce the number of inmates who commit more crimes and get sent back to prison.

If those programs work, the number of out-of-state inmates will sink to zero, Thatcher said, "and you eliminate the need to build two substantial prisons. Instead of having to build two, you only have to build one."

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Information from: The News Tribune, http://www.thenewstribune.com