Prison Cuts Change Lives

WALLA WALLA - About 160 positions were eliminated at the Washington State Penitentiary recently, affecting many valley residents.

Chad Lewis, spokesman for the Washington Department of Corrections, said the cuts made two weeks ago are the result of an analysis earlier this year that showed the state could reduce the budget for corrections as well as the custody levels at different prisons.

As of last Monday, there are 32 prison employees residing in Dayton, 14 in Prescott and 49 in Waitsburg, according to Shari Hall, a public information officer with the penitentiary. Of these 95 total employees from these cities, 13 were directly affected by the layoff.

Those who have had their position cut at the penitentiary will have formal options at Washington State Patrol, Coyote Ridge Corrections Center or statewide, Hall said. They also will have informal options to be transitioned to on-call or take voluntary layoffs.

Lewis said there was an excess of medium-level custody beds in the state and a shortage of beds for minimum security prisoners at the state penitentiary. Because of this, minimum-custody prisoners were being kept in medium custody beds and keeping costs higher than they needed to be.

"That is not cost-efficient," Lewis said.

Medium custody prisoners require more officers and staff hours than minimum custody, he said.

To get more minimum custody prisoners into the right beds, the penitentiary in Walla Walla is being converted from a medium-custody prison to offer more minimum custody beds come January, he said. The jail will move out its higher-risk offenders and move in minimum-risk offenders in 2012. He described it as changing the prison from a "high school to a middle school."

"This puts us more in line with the custody level we need," Lewis said.

Walla Walla's penitentiary joins the other older prisons in reducing the custody level because older units cost the state more to maintain in general, he said.

Changing the older prisons to minimum custody prisons will save the state about $10 million a year, Lewis said. The cost savings will be so great because those prisons simply will not need to employ as many officers. Employees were laid off based on seniority. About 60 of those who lost their jobs will be offered the chance to take positions at the newer Coyote Ridge prison in Connell, Lewis said. However, this means about 60 current employees with less seniority at Coyote Ridge will be bumped out of their jobs. But, as some employees opt to leave Coyote Ridge for another job or to retire, the number of available jobs there for former penitentiary officers will vary.

"The number keeps changing," Lewis said. "It's all based on seniority."

This is not the first round of layoffs at the penitentiary this year. Lewis said the department closed a unit in Walla Walla that caused the prison to cut officers early in 2011. And this may not be the end of the layoffs. Lewis said the legislature is currently in special session and it seems as though the state's revenue keeps declining.

"We still have to reduce spending by about $2 million," he said. "No one knows what that will look like. There's really no way to tell (if there will be more layoffs) at this point."