State corrections agency proposes funding, staffing increases

DES MOINES - State corrections officials on Friday proposed spending increases as high as $38.7 million for fiscal year 2014, which includes funds for up to 500 new positions.

However, critics called the plan inadequate because most of the new jobs would not be at existing facilities.

The Department of Corrections has been allocated an overall spending level of about $367 million and 3,772 full-time positions for fiscal 2013.

“We are asking for what we think is a very defensible budget, one that brings staff back to the Iowa Department of Corrections,” John Baldwin, the agency's director, said after a presentation to members of the agency's oversight board.

The board will take final action next month on a two-year budget plan, which department officials will submit to Gov. Terry Branstad by Oct. 1.

The budget proposal includes funding to open new prisons in Fort Madison and Mitchellville, and to operate community-based residential facilities in Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Ottumwa, Sioux City and Waterloo. Those facilities have about 165 vacant beds and waiting lists because lawmakers have not authorized the money needed to open them.

The proposal also includes capital expenditures of $34 million next fiscal year and nearly $28 million in fiscal 2015 to build residential facilities in Des Moines, Ames and Burlington, and address other maintenance and infrastructure needs.

Danny Homan, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 61, said seeking 262 to 508 full-time positions in the next fiscal year was inadequate.

The union and DOC officials did a joint study in 2006 that identified a shortfall of between 400 and 600 correctional officers. The state's prison population has grown since then, Homan noted, and state officials said Friday that 468 previously funded staff positions have been removed from the department's budget since fiscal 2009.

“They're not even touching the tip of the iceberg on this with their proposal for staffing” either inside Iowa prisons or within the community-based corrections system, Homan said.

“At some point in time, the system's going to break,” the AFSCME leader added. “Somebody's going to get hurt if they don't do something to fix it.”

Baldwin said he considers the state's corrections system to be safe because of the efforts of a well-trained staff. The emphasis continues to be to operate prisons in an effective manner “and to make the punishment for those people who try to attack us very, very severe.”

Friday's budget presentation noted that nationally, Iowa ranks 48th in the percentage of the total state budget spent on corrections, at 1.8 percent.

Also, during Friday's meeting, board member Johnie Hammond - a former state legislator from Ames - asked the panel to consider adopting an anti-shackling policy for pregnant female prisoners. She said about 20 other states have adopted similar legislation.

Hammond said she has been told the state corrections department currently operates under a policy similar to the model legislation she proposed, where female inmates are not shackled after their six month of pregnancy.

But she noted the policy she proposed also would apply to jails in Iowa that may have no policy or different policies from the state agency. She said she did not want any female prisoner who has gone into labor to be shackled under any circumstance, noting “when you're nine months pregnant and in labor you're not in any condition to run away.”

Baldwin estimated that there are one to two births in the prison system per month and that the state's policy “is a mirror” of what Hammond proposed.

“We don't shackle any female offender who is giving birth unless the situation is so dangerous that it warrants it and honestly I can't remember the last time that we have done that,” he said.

The DOC director said the issue has been introduced in previous legislative sessions but has not progressed very far. He said if the board chooses to adopt Hammond's proposal in September, his agency would support it as part of its 2013 legislative package.

“The fact is, if it's not in the law, it could happen,” Hammond said.