Lights Out At The Penitentiary

Story from the Wall Street Journal

KINCHELOE, Mich. -- Jeffrey Woods, warden of the Hiawatha Correctional Facility here at the eastern end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, was vacationing on Lake Huron when his cellphone rang on July 1.

The message from his boss: Hiawatha, which had been slated to shut down in October as part of a sweeping downsizing of the state's prison system, would now have to close by Aug. 7. That meant he had just five weeks to ship out 1,100 inmates and 207 staff.

"I stopped sleeping" after that, says Mr. Woods, who kept a to-do list by his bed and wrote down new tasks when he was jolted awake in the middle of the night.

The scramble to empty Hiawatha prison is part of a rapid shift in thinking about how many people should be locked up in the U.S., and for what crimes.

For three decades, state and local governments built and filled jails to make good on promises to get tough on crime. Now, the recession and collapsing budgets are forcing an about face.

Prisons are one of the biggest single line items in many state budgets, in part because nearly five times as many people are now behind bars as in the 1970s. From California to New York, officials are now closing penitentiaries and releasing inmates early. At least 26 states have cut corrections spending in fiscal year 2010, and at least 17 are closing prisons or reducing their inmate populations, according to the Vera Institute on Justice, a criminal-justice reform organization in New York.

The problem is especially acute in Michigan. Inmates here on average serve 127% of their court-ordered minimum sentences, well beyond the sentences of inmates in other states that offer parole, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center. The state last year spent $2 billion on prisons, and one third of all state employees work for the department of corrections, which is among the highest percentage in the nation. With the collapse of the auto industry, the pressure to pare these costs is high.

Earlier this year, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm expanded the parole and clemency board from 10 members to 15 and announced the state's prison population of 48,000 would be cut by 4,000 inmates. Seven correctional facilities have closed so far this year, including Hiawatha; the state has announced it will shutter another four. At least one of those four might remain open as Michigan considers accepting detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and prisoners from other states. Officials from the federal government recently toured a maximum-security state prison in Standish, Mich., as a possible new home for prisoners held at Guantanamo.


But Hiawatha didn't get such a reprieve. That is why on the morning of July 28, Warden Woods was in his office at 7 a.m. poring over closure plans. Hiawatha, a so-called secure level-one prison, held everyone from burglars to second-degree murderers. Outside Mr. Woods's office, 40 inmates, each wearing arm and leg restraints, boarded a bus with dark-tinted windows headed 200 miles away to another prison where they would serve out the rest of their sentences. More buses and vans would be rolling later in the day, some carrying inmates as far away as Marquette Branch Prison, more than four hours west of here.

Before inmates could be moved, staff had to consider details like where their co-defendants were located. In some cases, prisoners had testified against co-defendants, or vice versa, and there was bad blood. Gang affiliations also had to be taken into account; wardens didn't want rival gang members ending up in the same place, or worse, cell block. Medical needs and escape histories were factored in, too.

In his office, behind the heavy, sliding security bars that mark the entrance to the inside of the facility, deputy warden Duncan MacLaren was fielding calls for linens, desks and floor fans from the facilities that were taking Hiawatha's inmates. Some of the 16 facilities were also asking that beds, mattresses and lockers be sent before the inmates.

Between calls, Mr. MacLaren played the role of therapist to Hiawatha's staff. He counseled employees who were worried about making it on reduced pay since several of them were being demoted as a result of job transfers. He was in the same boat, demoted to an assistant deputy warden at another prison.

In the center of the prison yard Officer Al Pennell and several other officers scanned the grounds, waiting for prisoners who had not been transferred yet to filter through, unit by unit, for lunch. The huge garden that inmates had grown over the years was beginning to show signs of neglect as staff and prisoners got too busy to weed it.

The president of the local chapter of the union representing the officers, Mr. Pennell had also been inundated with calls and inquiries from guards being transferred. Nine officers from Hiawatha would lose their jobs once the prison closed. Although many were transferring to other prisons located on the same 7,200-acre site, there were still concerns over a lack of familiarity with those prisons -- their operations, layouts, schedules. Some questioned whether they would be able to take vacations they had put in for before the news broke that Hiawatha was closing.

There was little talk among the inmates as they walked past, many of them glowering at the officers. Mr. Pennell says he tells friends to keep a close watch over their kids. "We know what we're letting go. We see all the files," he says, referring to the inmates throughout the system who are being released early.

The decisions about whom to parole are made 250 miles away in Lansing, where the Michigan Parole Board occupies the third floor of the Department of Corrections headquarters. Without a quick reduction in the prison population, prisons and camps can't be shut down. Of Hiawatha's 1,100 inmates, 25 were paroled under the recent push to get prisoners out of the system faster.

Parole board member Miguel Berrios was one of the people responsible for thinning the prison's ranks. On the afternoon of July 29, he sat in his office eating microwaveable soup. He had just finished interviewing an inmate at another prison, one with mental issues who sexually assaulted a small child. It was Mr. Berrios's 20th hearing of the day. Once, parole board officials had to visit prisons in person before deciding to release an inmate. Now, hearings are done via video conference. Most interviews last 15 to 20 minutes, although some end quickly because inmates figure it is no use.

His questions for inmates are geared towards getting them to take responsibility for their crimes. He also wants to know if a prisoner has availed himself of the various programs inside. For people who have been turned down for parole before, he asks questions like, "You've been inside 10 years beyond your early release date. Why is that?"

One person Mr. Berrios recently recommended for parole was a man he arrested in the 1970s when Mr. Berrios was a police officer in Grand Rapids. He was also the man's probation officer at one point; at another time, he pursued him when the defendant absconded and became a fugitive. The crimes were never violent, but "he doesn't respect other people's property," Mr. Berrios said. "This guy had been with me 30 years. During the interview I told him we both need to retire." Mr. Berrios said he asked the inmate, who had served 20 years on his last offense, if he'd learned anything. "He said, 'Yeah, don't do this in Michigan.' "

Michigan officials had been reluctant to parole inmates after a 1992 case in which a paroled sex offender, Leslie Allen Williams, killed four young women in Oakland County. The budget crunch has changed that. At the end of 2008, there were 12,000 prisoners in the Michigan prison system who were eligible for parole, but hadn't been released. In recent months, 3,000 of them have been paroled.

The volume of parole interviews has climbed from a rate of about 400 to 500 a week last year to as many as 1,200 a week this year, says Charles Sinclair, the parole board administrator. Parole approvals in July were up 36% over the same time in 2008.

Critics say the rush to parole prisoners could lead to mistakes. It is "a risky strategy, no question. I don't think it's a very good plan," says Michigan State Sen. Wayne Kuipers, who chairs the state's Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Kuipers says Michigan historically has struggled with a poor recidivism rate, and that within 18 to 24 months of their release, 62% of parolees reoffend. He says the state has been testing some new re-entry programs for released inmates and he would rather see how successful those are before increasing paroles.

Mr. Sinclair of the parole board says new risk assessments, including one which can predict the likelihood that sex offender will re-offend, give board members more confidence.

"I am 100% positive we're doing the right thing," says Patricia Caruso, director of Michigan's Department of Corrections, of both the push for parole and the reentry programs. "Every dollar spent on corrections is a dollar not spent on education."

But, she says, she also lives in fear that a parolee will victimize someone and commit a new crime. "I can guarantee something bad will happen. Parolees, like you and I, are human beings and have free will," she says. "I know something bad will happen and I'm going to own it when it does. I say the rosary several times a day."

Back at Hiawatha on July 30, the furniture breakdown and turnstile departures continued as beds were disassembled, lockers moved and living areas emptied. The 10 open bays in each housing unit were initially built to house four men each in a dormitory style setting, meaning no doors and no privacy. That number had climbed as high as eight per bay over the years.

With just a few days to have the prison clear of inmates, there were still 420 prisoners left to be transferred. The night shift was rousting the mornings' travelers out of bed at 3:45 a.m. Another group of 40 men showered, ate breakfast, then headed back to their unit for the last head count they would have at Hiawatha. By 6 a.m. they'd be on a bus. When everyone was gone, only the buildings would remain: The state hasn't yet decided on Hiawatha's future.

Standing in the unit where he began as an officer on the night shift in 1989, Warden Woods said the closure was bittersweet. "I'm here at the end. I was here at the beginning," he said.

By Aug. 7, all the prisoners were gone and the warden faced the reports and requests on his desk, several of them from other wardens seeking equipment. Among the nearly 300 requests: the ladles from the dining hall.