Ground broken for expansion of women's prison

MITCHELLVILLE– Gov. Chet Culver and officials broke ground Thursday on a $68 million expansion and renovation at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville.

The project will have 888 beds and is expected to open January 2013. The prison's current capacity is 445, but 564 were housed there as of Thursday

“We need these beds,” said Warden Patti Wachtendorf.

When the renovation is complete, the Mitchellville facility will be the only prison that houses women in Iowa. Two other prisons in Mount Pleasant and Oakdale currently house female inmates.

Wachtendorf noted that in 1982, 50 women moved into the Mitchellville site, a former training school.

“We went in, took a training school and made it into a women's prison. Did we make it work? You bet we did, but it's not the opportunity that we have today to design a prison for women, for what works with women,” Wachtendorf said.

Wachtendorf predicted it would be the best correctional facility for women in the country.

“People are going to come to Iowa and say what are you doing? Why do we have successful women like this?” Wachtendorf said.

Robyn Mills, chairwoman of the Iowa Board of Corrections, said women need treatment especially for women.

“We've been trying to do that here, but with this state-of-the-art facility we will be able to bring really ground-breaking gender specific treatment to these women so that they can re-enter the community and not come back,” Mills said.

Department of Corrections Director John Baldwin said 40 percent of women admitted to the prison system have a diagnosable mental illness.

“This prison will have an amazing medical and mental health building, and we are going to address that problem very aggressively,” Baldwin said.

Culver highlighted what he said would be jobs created by the prison expansion.

“Because of this project here, 550 people are going to get a job at a time when we need to create economic opportunities, when we need to create jobs, and when we need to create economic development,” Culver said.

Culver noted the expansion will be completed with a project labor agreement, which he said means those working on the project can make “a couple of more bucks an hour.”

Part of the project's funding -- $47.5 million -- will be paid by the state's I-JOBS infrastructure investment program. The rest was appropriated by the Legislature, according to the governor's office.