By Cathy McKitrick
Standard-Examiner
DRAPER — Utah appears to be at a crossroads regarding where and how to house its growing prison population.
But its aging Point of the Mountain complex in Draper, which consists of outdated structures erected between 1951 and 2000, were intended for warehousing a smaller population.
Rep. Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, co-chairs the Prison Relocation Commission, is tasked with finding the best site in Utah to build a state-of-the-art facility that would rehabilitate prisoners rather than simply lock them away to mark time. Tuesday Wilson said if the commission makes the decision, lawmakers would avoid being called to a special session this summer.
However Gov. Gary Herbert is opposed to that idea.
Herbert said Thursday at his monthly news conference that he needs to have legislation from lawmakers that he can study and decide whether to sign or veto.
Herbert said it seems the commission is trying to expedite the issue and take the heat off the legislature.
Some Utah officials want to relocate the Draper facility in order to free up the land for development.
The cost of relocation remains the big question in all this. To fix up current digs would take about $240 million. And to tear down the campus and build fresh somewhere else is expected to require more than twice that size bankroll. Any move will require a few years to accomplish.
“Keep in mind that we’ve got this barrier in our way, where the prison doesn’t allow us to do a lot of the things we need to do to reduce recidivism,” Wilson told members of the Republican House Caucus recently. “The longer we delay that, the more impact we have on the system in a negative way. There’s probably a sweet spot and my guess is in a three-year time frame.”
Utah’s current prison facilities house more than 4,000 inmates, a growing number who grapple with mental illness and substance abuse issues.
“Everything is ‘make do.’ We’re not preparing people the right way,” Rollin Cook, executive director for Utah’s Department of Corrections, said during a prison tour Thursday.
For example, the Wasatch facility now houses 700 inmates, part of the entire Draper prison population of about 4,000 across all the various housing units. On Wasatch A-East where 94 inmates reside, four floors of single-bunk cells that each measure about 6 feet by 8 feet flank a narrow hallway. One cell had a six-inch strip of cardboard across the floor of the doorway that the inmate said kept the mice out.
Warden Scott Crowther described the layout as “Alcatraz technology,” designed for outdated linear-style supervision.
Many longterm minimum-security inmates occupy these cells and participate in classes and programs to help them re-enter society.
Cook said that Thursday’s tour was an attempt to be more open, and to underscore the need for prison reform and relocation.
“We want to show you why we need new facilities,” Cook said, describing funding for prison upkeep in recent years as “miniscule.”
The Timpanogos Women’s Correctional Facility was built in 1983 to house youth offenders, but now holds 525 female inmates.
“In 1983, this was high-tech corrections,” Crowther said outside the small control room where two corrections officers routinely monitor screens that show the facility’s four wings.
The cells were designed for isolation rather than socializaiton, with metal doors that each have two narrow windows and a gap at the bottom to slide meal trays through.
“There’s a push in corrections today for open cells where everyone can see each other,” Crowther said of areas that house minimum security inmates. “We’re trying to treat people like people.”
In A Section of the Olympus Mental Health Forensic Facility built in 1993, a dozen maximum security inmates spend most of their time in isolation behind doors that each have one small window.
Many have assaulted staff members repeatedly, Crowther said, and given any opportunity would harm themselves as well.
But isolation only compounds their problems, Cook said.
“How can they improve in a facility like this?” he asked.
The Uinta Facility, built in 1967, houses death row and some mentally ill inmates in Uinta 1 and provides intake and assessment facilities for incoming male prisoners in Uinta 5. Intake can span a period of six weeks, Cook said.
The prison now has a modern, well-lit dental clinic with four patient chairs at Oquirrh 5, where on one wall hangs a small sign that reads “No #&$^%! Profanity Any Time.”
Utah Corrections is required by law to administer medical and dental care to all inmates, Cook said. And a condition called “meth mouth” lands many a prisoner in one of these four dental chairs. The prison also operates a larger dental clinic in its onsite Wasatch infirmary.
About 150 staff members provide primary medical care at the Wasatch infirmary. Dr. Richard Garden, clinical services director for the Department of Corrections, said that their volume of work has increased in his two decades there.
“We could do better with a new clinic” in terms of care, flow and efficiency, Garden said, “but we make do with this facility.”
In a new prison, medical and mental health care would be integrated into one structure to function side-by-side, Garden said.
The Oquirrh 5 facility houses some of the geriatric inmates who would be at risk if mixed in with the general prison population. The narrow open room lined with about two dozen beds appears more makeshift than permanent, but these minimum security inmates are able to socialize and watch what they can see of the outside world through a bank of old windows.
Johnny Morrell occupies one of these beds, and said this is his ninth time in prison on drug offenses since 1992.
“I like smoking weed for pain and mental health reasons,” Morrell said.
Morrell has been housed at various county jail sites, and said he was grateful to be in Oquirrh 5 where “I don’t need to worry about being beat to death.”
William Hopkins has been in Oquirrh 5 for eight years, and in and out of the Utah State Prison for two decades. He graduated from high school behind bars, Hopkins said.
When asked what could be improved, Hopkins said he’d like to see better medical care and less crowding.
“Programs and therapy should be top priority so we can re-integrate into society,” Williams said.