State budget woes have it targeted for partial or full closure
The campaign to save Larch Corrections Center is under way.
The minimum-security prison in remote, forested east Clark County should remain open and fully staffed to fulfill inmates’ need for transitional services and the community’s need for jobs, says local NAACP leader Earl Ford.
Ford, immediate past president of the civil rights organization’s Vancouver chapter, is asking Clark County’s elected officials and concerned citizens to press Gov. Chris Gregoire to keep Larch open.
A consultant has recommended a partial closure of the 480-bed facility to help close a $12 million gap in the state prison budget, with the possibility of complete closure at some future date. The 2010 Legislature will have the final word on the prison’s fate.
“I spent a considerable amount of my personal time as president of the Vancouver Branch NAACP working to help Larch become racially inclusive and open to community involvement,” Ford wrote in a Nov. 27 letter to local legislators. He now serves as the chapter’s legal redress chairman.
At any given time, about a quarter of Larch inmates are African-American and another quarter are Hispanic, Ford said. And the prison is about to get its first African-American superintendent. Eleanor Vernell, field administrator for community corrections in Pierce County, will replace Patricia Gorman, who is retiring.
The NAACP has worked closely with Gorman and state corrections officials over the past eight years to eliminate what was once a racist working environment for minority employees at the prison, Ford said in an interview.
“At the time we got involved, Larch had four African-American employees and they all had discrimination complaints against the facility,” he said.
Vancouver’s black community has worked to improve the climate, he said: making presentations to inmates on black history month and Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday; bringing a gospel choir into the prison; and letting inmates know there is a local organization that is concerned about civil rights.
Those efforts have paid off, he said.
“To see this facility on a cut list is abhorrent to us.”
Closure of the facility would deal an economic blow to Clark County’s already ailing economy, Ford added.
Larch employs 107 and has an annual budget of $9 million. The local economy also benefits from the prison’s contracts with medical providers, construction companies and other contractors who provide services.
Legislative support
“I will definitely be fighting to keep Larch open,” said Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver. “It’s the most successful rehabilitation, the closest to family. More than half the inmates at Larch do come from Southwest Washington.”
“It’s all the Southwest Washington delegation that will be trying to keep the Larch facility open,” said Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver. “But the larger voice is from the King County and Puget Sound area. It’s going to be difficult, as everything is going to be difficult.”
The state faces a $2.6 billion budget deficit by mid-2011. When lawmakers convene next month in Olympia, they will have to make deep cuts in discretionary programs such as corrections and social services, raise new revenue, or approve some combination of both.
Moeller says he opposes an “all-cuts” budget like the one the Legislature approved this year.
“That’s the problem with an all-cuts budget,” he said. “For many areas, the government is the largest employer. We are looking at very large effects in these communities.”
The prison, located on the Yacolt Burn State Forest, provides work for about 90 prisoners on crews assigned to fire suppression, trail maintenance, tree planting and pre-commercial thinning. It also offers basic education classes, an information technology certificate, and training in wastewater treatment. It’s closely linked to a community corrections system that helps inmates with the challenges of re-entry.
Larch recently scored 100 percent on mandatory standards and 98 percent on non-mandatory standards in a national accreditation audit.
Target: 1,580 beds
A consultant hired by the state budget office at the direction of the 2009 Legislature has recommended a plan to eliminate 1,580 beds in corrections facilities, 235 beds in juvenile rehabilitation facilities, and 250 beds in residential facilities for the disabled.
An estimated $12 million in savings resulting from those closures is built into the state’s 2009-11 budget.
In its final report, consultant Christopher Murray and Associates recommended a phased reduction in prison beds that would close one 194-bed living unit at Larch for up to nine years. That option also would require downsizing McNeil Island Corrections Center, closing the Ahtanum View Corrections Center in Yakima, and moving that program to the Monroe Correctional Complex.
In the second phase, the main institution within the old prison walls at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Wall also would be closed.
But that option still would not allow the state to reach its goal of eliminating 1,580 prison beds, because legislation that would limit incarceration of lower-risk offenders failed to pass the 2009 Legislature. Without that legislation, the state will be able to reduce the prison population by only 1,100, the consultant said.
If the Legislature takes additional steps to reduce the number of lower-risk offenders in the prison system, the consultant recommends that Larch eventually be fully closed.
