SALT LAKE CITY — In August, an officer with the Utah Department of Corrections emailed an alert to state legislators.
“People are feeling like the new prison is not safe for [officers] working in the new direct [supervision] units,” the officer continued. “From the stories I have heard of it’s only a matter of time before an officer is seriously injured or killed.”
Another officer who said he had six years of experience wrote to lawmakers to say, for the first time, he was thinking to himself, “‘I may have to fight for my life tonight, and If I’m in the hospital will my Wife and Kids know where I am… Have I given my sons good memories of their father in case I don’t make it out?’”
They aren’t the only ones unhappy.
“It’s horrible,” says Ashley Hansen, who was among 2,400 inmates moved in July from the old prison in Draper.
“We can't get supplies,” Hansen said in a phone interview with FOX 13.
“The mosquitoes are ridiculous,” she added.
“This prison is not worth what they paid for it.”
Utah paid $1 billion. Yvonne Jewkes, a criminology professor at the University of Bath, said she has not heard of another penitentiary so expensive.
Despite all that money, a FOX 13 investigation has found, Utah failed to invest in a workforce to operate the new prison. The design of the prison itself is exacerbating the worker shortage.
“The problem was the preparation and getting ready for these moments that are occurring now,” said Chad Bennion, a former state legislator who now represents corrections officers – the preferred term for guards – at Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 14. “It just didn’t happen.”
Wednesday, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections reported a group of inmates assaulted a fellow prisoner and an officer. Everyone is expected to recover. It was the second time in eight days an officer was assaulted at the new prison.
The Utah Legislature voted in 2015 to close the Draper prison and build the new one. It’s formally called the Utah State Correctional Facility. It sits west of Salt Lake City International Airport.
“You will not find another correctional facility in the country that’s like this one,” Jim Russell, the director of the Utah Division of Facilities Construction and Management, said at a legislative hearing in 2016.
“A significant improvement in working conditions,” Gov. Spencer Cox said during the ribbon cutting this summer. “A place where you can look forward to coming to work.”
“It offers access to healthcare, work, programming,” Department of Corrections Director Brian Nielson said in a video posted to Youtube this year.
The emails from staff and interviews with inmates show the promises haven’t become reality. Low pay has long kept Corrections from hiring and keeping enough workers. The old Draper prison had a labor shortage, too, and the new penitentiary requires more staff than its predecessor.
That’s because it was designed to utilize what’s called direct supervision. Instead of keeping corrections officers in control booths to monitor inmates and remotely open doors for them, like at the old prison, officers are more often supposed to be sitting at a desk among the inmates.
“Direct supervision is,” Kevin Miller, of GSBS Architects, explained during a 2017 legislative hearing, “that philosophy believes that the officers are actually safer through those interactions than they would be if they didn’t have the interactions.”
The model also means officers must accompany the inmates around the prison – to three meals a day, classes, counseling, medical appointments, worship services and anywhere else they are supposed to be.
“Way, way more labor intensive for the staff,” said Nitokalisi Fonua, an inmate who works in the prison kitchen.
“There's an officer that walks us all the way to the next checkpoint,” he explained. “And there's another officer that takes us and walks us to the next checkpoint.”
Much of the new prison has dormitory-style housing with up to eight beds per unit. Or inmates like Fonua sleep in a cubicle – a bunk surrounded by short walls. Both tend to be cheaper than building conventional dual-bunk cells with a toilet and sink.
There’s no evidence the more-shared style housing improves chances of rehabilitation, said Jewkes, the criminology professor.
“There will be violence and bullying and abuse and possibly sexual abuse that goes on in those spaces,” Jewkes said.
Any violence could be limited with enough officers to keep watch, Jewkes said.
Nielson has told the Legislature that the more-demanding workload has caused some officers to quit. Some officers have been transferred from the prison in Gunnison. Overtime has been mandatory.
“You’ve got officers at the facility that are putting in 144 hours every two weeks,” Bennion said.
That, too, has caused some officers to quit.
“My last day with the Department of Corrections is Thursday,” one worker emailed to the Legislature. “I am leaving for another Law Enforcement Agency.”
“I am looking to venture away from [Utah Department of Corrections] not only for a quest of better pay but also for a better environment to work in,” one Corrections employee wrote. “And the mandatory overtime has definitely influenced this decision.”
He explained that he was a parole officer in St. George pulled from that job to work shifts at the new prison – 300 miles from his home. That parole officer recently quit working for the Department of Corrections to go work for a police force in southwest Utah.
FOX 13 obtained emails to legislators through a public records request.
Some of the emails also contend the state was unprepared for the move itself. One employee described not knowing how doors worked or where to find emergency gear.
Another told legislators about being promised a staff dining area only to arrive at the new prison to find it unfinished. Photos and posts to a Facebook page for corrections officers showed them stocking the dining area with donated groceries about two months after the prison’s opening.
As of Tuesday, the nearby stretch of Interstate 80 doesn’t yet have a sign telling prison visitors to turn there.
“We are in a crisis,” one employee wrote to legislators. “We have minimum staff, and staff without proper training and support trying to operate a prison that wasn’t ready to operate.”
The Utah Department of Corrections is missing people to work jobs in medicine and programming, too. Inmates say that’s impacting their health and how long they may be incarcerated.
“I’m about six months pregnant right now,” inmate Brandi Chadwick said in a phone interview.
“I've had the worst prenatal care you can imagine,” Chadwick said. “My prenatals weren't gonna get refilled because they weren't life-threatening at the time.”
Fonua is 11 years into a 40-year sentence for two manslaughter convictions. He wants to take a cognitive behavioral class to give him an early chance at parole.
“Tools to help you overcome your addictions,” he explained. “Tools [that] will help you overcome your anger.”
Even if he isn’t released early, he could use those coping skills in prison, he said. Yet, for all the claims the new prison would offer more rehabilitation, Fonua is being told the same thing he was at the old prison: he can’t take the class because other inmates with less time on their sentences need it first.
The Utah Legislature this year approved pay increases for corrections workers. Starting officer pay is now $27 an hour. For the moment, that’s more than the Department of Corrections chief rival – the Salt Lake County jail.
Then there are the problems legislators knew about before allocating a cent for the new prison and that can’t be fixed by a few extra guards.
It’s mosquitos.
Open water sits steps away from the prison’s front gate. Wetlands surround the facility. Planners were warned mosquitos would be a problem in warm months.
Yet inmates say they are not allowed to have repellent; when outside, they were mauled by the insects until the weather cooled this fall.
“We get attacked every time we go to the chow hall,” Chadwick said.
Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District has been spraying around the prison and giving its administrators advice on how to reduce the insects, said Greg White, the abatement district’s assistant director.
Jewkes, who studies prisons all over the world, said insect swarms will take a toll on inmates' physical and mental health.
“I can't think of anything worse, almost,” she said. “It feels like one of Dante's circles of hell to be bitten by mosquitoes every time you venture out outside.”
Cox and House Speaker Brad Wilson, who championed the prison move, both said – through spokespeople – they did not have time for an interview about the prison. Cox’s spokesperson issued a statement:
“Relocating thousands of people and opening a new corrections facility are heavy lifts under any conditions. Certainly, there have been difficulties related to staffing shortages, software and facilities challenges. However, I’m grateful for the professionalism of our Department of Corrections in addressing these issues promptly and grateful to the incarcerated individuals and their families for their patience and cooperation during this transition.”
Nielson, the Corrections director, spoke to FOX 13 at the Capitol.
“We don’t have enough staff to operate [the prison] the way that it’s designed,” he said. “Our recruitment numbers are up, our retention numbers are better than they’ve been in the past. But we’re a great place to work and we’re recruiting heavily.”
When asked whether inmates who qualify for programs can take them now, Nielson replied with a question of his own.
“What does that mean? Is it the right time for them to receive the program that they’re assigned to?
“If they’re going to be there for a number of years, the timing of that programming needs to be looked at as well.”
As for mosquitos, Nielson said some repellents are being approved for inmates to use.
Is Utah getting its billion dollars' worth out of the new prison?
“We pulled off a move,” Nielson replied. “We moved 2,400-plus incarnated folks in five days from one facility to the other. We staffed both prisons simultaneously. We used our entire agency along with all of our partners across the state of Utah -both state and local agencies. So yes, absolutely.”
Hansen prefers her old cell.
“The other prison was way better in every way possible,” she said.