Expansion for 200 men cost $39.5 million
By CLAUDIA ROWEP-I REPORTER
MONROE -- The state's largest prison, which houses 2,500 men, is about to expand still further, adding hundreds of beds for its worst-behaved inmates. Yet as they lie in their 12-by-8-foot cells, gazing up through narrow windows at a tiny slice of sky, the criminals in solitary confinement at Monroe Correctional Complex will be using low-energy lights to read by and collected rainwater to flush their toilets.
Theirs is the first prison unit in the state to be certified as "green" by the U.S. Green Building Council, and officials at the Department of Corrections believe it may be the first such cellblock in the nation. It cost $39.5 million to build and will hold 200 men.
The new, energy-efficient cellblock for the worst-behaved inmates at Monroe Correctional Complex will open in January.
The effort to build more environmentally friendly prisons dovetails with an ambitious, $500 million campaign to expand inmate space around the state.
New units are in the works at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Franklin County; the state penitentiary in Walla Walla; Larch Corrections Center in Clark County; Cedar Creek Corrections Center in Thurston County; Airway Heights Corrections Center near Spokane; and Mission Creek, the women's prison near Belfair.
By 2009, when the construction is scheduled for completion, Washington will be able to house 3,500 more offenders. Even so, Corrections officials predict a 4,000-bed shortfall within 10 years.
"We don't think you can outbuild the inmate population," said Mike Kenney, assistant deputy of prison departments. "It's kind of a 'Field of Dreams' syndrome."
The real solution, he said, is a comparatively inexpensive $25 million re-entry program, aimed at curtailing recidivism so released inmates do not return.
"The whole purpose of re-entry is to turn back the tide so we don't keep building new prisons," Kenney said. "We don't believe that building is a long-term solution."
To advocates of reform, however, the skewed numbers -- $25 million for re-entry programs, versus $500 million for new bed space -- make plain the official priorities at Corrections.
"They do these little piecemeal things," said Ari Kohn, who speaks frequently with legislators about the need for improved education 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."
Ken Quinn, superintendent at Monroe and a longtime associate of Corrections Secretary Harold Clarke, acknowledged that violent crime rates have been leveling off. But when offenders arrive at prison, they come with ever-longer sentences.
"They're younger, more violent and doing more time," Quinn said. "So we've had this need for more space."
Relatives of inmates at Monroe insist that overcrowding at the complex 45 minutes from Seattle has led to fights and several inmate deaths.
A new cellblock at Monroe Correctional Complex may be the first to be certified "green" by the U.S. Green Building Council.
But energy-efficient prisons, mandated by the Legislature, are more costly to build. The overhaul at Coyote Ridge, in which every component has been designed for a "green" rating, will add 2,048 beds and carries a $254 million price tag.
"It costs a little bit more to build," said David Jansen, who oversees capital programs at Corrections. "But over the life of the building it ends up costing less" to heat and maintain.
Paddy Hescock, facilities manager at Monroe, is a believer.
"There's a payback," he said. "It might be 50 or 60 years down the road, but with non-sustainable buildings, you have no payback at all."
Hescock gets his guidelines from the Green Building Council.
But inmates at Monroe have not been shy about offering their own ideas for saving water and electricity, some of them quite ingenious, he said.
Energy efficiency is particularly urgent at Corrections, which must keep lights on 24 hours a day in many prisons. To keep costs down, the department has taken an unusually proactive approach.
"The Department of Corrections," spokesman Chad Lewis said, "is now probably one of the greenest agencies in the state."
P-I reporter Claudia Rowe can be reached at 206-448-8320 or claudiarowe@seattlepi.com.
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