Iowa inmate numbers up, staff shrinks

DES MOINES - Iowa prisons continue to house more inmates than they were built to accommodate, but an ambitious construction program and coordination with the Board of Parole should reduce overcrowding, the Department Corrections Director John Baldwin told lawmakers Feb. 23.

Prison population is 23 percent over capacity, Baldwin told the Transportation, Infrastructures and Capitals Appropriations Subcommittee.

The system's capacity is 7,209, but Wednesday morning, there were 8,883 inmates at Iowa's nine prisons, Baldwin said. That's up from about 8,200 a year ago. Just as it did then, Corrections is working with the parole board to bring inmate numbers in line with the prisons' bed space, he said.

While inmate numbers have increased, his staff numbers have decreased Baldwin told a legislative budget subcommittee earlier this month.

The department's prison staff dropped from 3,064 to 2,811 in fiscal 2010 and to 2,820 employees. Early-retirement incentive reduced the number of experienced supervisors within the agency, he said.

The DOC director said he was “troubled” by a nearly 24 percent increase since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 in the number of “critical incident reports” within Iowa's prison system, with more than 250 occurrences in the past three quarters. He said the number of incidents involving assaults and physical altercations increased by 62 percent since mid-2009 – including 107 in the first half of the current fiscal year.

“We are seeing more people who come to us with violence in their past,” he said. “Corrections is a balance and it can't get out of whack. We need to get back in balance.”

All prisons are over capacity, ranging from 82 at Fort Dodge Correctional Facility to 413 at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale, Baldwin reported.

The average age of inmates is 35 and about 7,300 are serving their first or second sentence. There are 63 who have been committed to a prison at least five times, two nine or more, according to the department.

Also, on any given day, Baldwin said, there are about 30,000 Iowans in the community-based corrections programs.

In a year, the department supervises about 60,000 Iowans at one time or another.

Responding to questions, Baldwin said about 95 inmates fall into the “other” category in that they are not serving a sentence, but in prison on a civil commitment or in the system's forensic hospital for competency evaluations. In some cases, it is determined that inmates cannot safely function in Iowa once they have completed their sentences.

That “other” number is growing, he said.

Baldwin also gave the subcommittee an update on construction at prisons and community corrections facilities that, he said, will help, but not eliminate, alleviate, crowding. Overall, the department will gain about 170 to 200 beds for men when construction is completed at the Mitchellville women's prison in May 2013 and prisoners are moved there from other facilities.

The highlight of the building plan is replacing the Fort Madison prison.

“We're so pleased to be moving out of a prison built 70 years before Iowa was a state,” Baldwin said, explaining that it was increasingly costly to operate. Architects expect the cost to heat the new LEED Gold prison will be about 53 percent of the current $1.5 million annual cost. The new prison will house 350 more inmates.

SourceMediaGroup News reporter Rod Boshart contributed to this report