Lockdown on Opportunity

Published: June 1, 2009

There are prisons in Wisconsin and palaces in the Middle East that share the same architect.

A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire separates a construction area from public access to Ethan Allen School’s health and services building in the background.

The building industry needs work and the state’s prisons need more room. But the potential for new construction is limited by mandates with no money to support them.

Ashraf Sadek, an Egyptian-born managing principal of the Madison office of Bray Associates-Architects Inc., Sheboygan, designed palaces in Saudi Arabia before working for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections in the mid-1990s.

Opulence aside, Sadek, 53, said blueprints for Wisconsin prisons look similar to those of Saudi Arabian palaces.

Plans for both include small cities built within walls, he said.

“You’re not just planning the cells, but also for administrative offices, a health clinic, library, religious area for worship, etc.,” Sadek said of designing prisons. “Prisons are similar to a campus design in that they include open spaces as well. So it’s not just a prison.”

But despite their similarities in design and construction, one aspect makes prisons asdifferent from palaces as convicts are from kings: Prisons are built on a budget.

“It’s opposite of what we have here in working with those people,” Sadek said of Saudi Arabian royalty. “Here the problem is budget.”

In recent years, the DOC’s budget fell far short of what was needed to keep up with the state’s rising prison population.

As of May 9, 2008, the state’s prisons were 1,827 beds beyond capacity, according to a 10-year correctional facility system development plan compiled for the state by Mead & Hunt Inc., Madison.

The lack of money for new construction can leave two prisoners cramped into cells as small as 49 by 54 square feet. It also denies Wisconsin’s building industry the opportunity for much-needed work.

“There’s a common misconception that prisons are wasted money,” Sadek said. “They’re called correctional because you want the environment to convert prisoners so they’re able to go back to society safely.”

Some work is being completed on the state’s correctional facilities, and the DOC has approval to begin more.

Mead & Hunt is planning a $5 million upgrade at the Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution in Plymouth.

In Winnebago, a $13.9 million drug-abuse correctional center is under way, and another $7 million will be put toward construction of a 45-bed female facility.

A crane lifts a rafter into an enclosed construction area in April where work continues on a new gatehouse and a visitor’s center at Ethan Allen School.

But the work being done represents only a fraction of what Mead and Hunt recommends.

The engineering firm’s study urges the state to complete $1.2 billion worth of construction to upgrade or replace state correctional facilities.

The report suggests a prison expansion program that, if approved in full, would provide 5,315 additional beds in the state prison system by 2019.

Some say Wisconsin’s gap between the money needed for prison construction and the money actually spent started widening in 1998. The state that year passed truth-in-sentencing legislation, which increased the length of incarceration for many inmates by limiting and sometimes eliminating parole eligibility for felony offenders.

Kenneth Streit, clinical associate professor of law at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said other states require statements explaining the financial effects of crime and sentencing legislation. But Wisconsin eliminated the requirement about 25 years ago, he said, letting legislators introduce get-tough legislation without worrying about money.

“There have been several factors contributing to the increase in the prison population during this decade,” said John Dipko, director of public information for the Wisconsin DOC, “such as sentence-length increases under truth-in-sentencing legislation, as well as an increase in the number of offenders who are revoked for violating terms of their community supervision.”

The increase in prison population referred to by Dipko reduced the space available to properly rehabilitate convicted criminals, said Janine Geske, a professor of law at Marquette University Law School and a former state Supreme Court justice.

Reducing the number of repeat offenders is central to eliminating overcrowding at state prisons. But programs to train and educate prisoners for easier assimilation to post-prison life require space.

“This (overcrowding) translates into institutions that are dangerously full with inmate idleness and the frustration is evident among many of the inmates and staff,” according to Mead and Hunt’s report.

Geske said the number of released prisoners who re-offend and add to prison overcrowding could be dramatically reduced if there was more space for rehabilitation programs.

A worker guides a rafter into place as work continues in April on a new 4,000-square-foot gatehouse and a 7,300-square-foot visitor’s center at Ethan Allen School in Delafield. While the Wisconsin Department of Corrections is completing work and has been approved to start more, the system needs to complete more than $1 billion worth of more work to meet its capacity needs, a report suggests.

“These guys are not stupid, a lot of them are bright and have a bunch of talent,” said Geske, who meets with inmates as part of a restorative justice program. “I think the majority (of released prisoners) walk out and don’t want to re-offend.”

But even though space for prisoner rehabilitation could reduce the correctional system’s overcrowding issue, the state Legislature is most likely to approve spending on building medical facilities for aging and infirmed prisoners, Streit said.

Adequacy of mental health services is one of the few rights recognized by federal courts regarding prisoners, he said, and failure to respond could invite litigation.

The Mead & Hunt study lists “the growing number of inmates with specialized medical conditions; the significant aging of the inmate population as a result of increasing lengths of confinement; and the need to minimize escalating medical costs” as reason for the following recommendations:

• construction of a 50-bed infirmary addition as part of a recommended $17.5 million in work at Oakhill Correctional Institution in Oregon;
• a $3.7 million expansion of the health services unit at Oshkosh Correctional Institution in Oshkosh;
• renovation to expand health services programs at Redgranite Correctional Institution in Redgranite as part of a recommended $52.5 million in work;
• construction of a new health services unit and infirmary at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac as part of a recommended $35.4 million in work.

“At a time of tight budgets, the Legislature would have to consider these recommendations … versus allowing current occupancy to rise by several percentage points in existing prisons,” Streit said.

Sadek said the DOC probably will continue struggling to garner money for new construction as long as the perception that prisons are built too much like palaces exists.

“There’s a misconception out there that the state is spending a lot on its prisons,” Sadek said. “It’s not true. “The state’s prisons are bare-minimum facilities. They are just (about) keeping clean and the staff safe as well as the prisoners.”