SALT LAKE CITY — Two Utah legislators who toured the state's new prison say they were encouraged by what they saw there despite staffing shortages.
“It seem like the staff is really happy out there,” said Sen. Nate Blouin, (D-Salt Lake City) on Wednesday. “The guards are seeing a big improvement as far as their ability to work with the prisoners.”
“They still have mandatory overtime going on with their folks,” said Sen. Jen Plumb, who, like Blouin, is a freshman Democrat representing Salt Lake City and surrounding towns. “Obviously, not ideal. Obviously, still an indication they’re down (employees), but it feels like it’s on the right swing.”
Inmates moved to the $1 billion prison in western Salt Lake City in July. Its design puts corrections officers — the preferred term for guards — side-by-side with inmates and requires more staff than the closed prison in Draper, which itself was short of workers.
Department of Corrections Director Brian Nielson has told legislators that hundreds more officers and other types of employees are needed at both the new prison, as well as the penitentiary in Gunnison. Meanwhile, both the Fraternal Order of Police chapter representing corrections officers and advocates for Utah inmates have voiced concerns about safety and health at the new prison.
Plumb and Blouin say they were among about a half dozen legislators who toured most of the new prison’s core units. Plumb said she shed tears at the intake unit where new inmates receive assessments and health screenings.
“You don’t really appreciate what [incarceration] is until you get behind those double locking doors and you see folks whose liberty is no longer theirs,” Plumb said.
Plumb said inmates were proud of the skills they learn in the new prison, including more modern processes for manufacturing furniture, license plates and car registration stickers.
Plumb added her brother was incarcerated at the Draper prison for a few months in the 1990s and said that facility was not rehabilitative.
“I felt a whole lot better about what I was seeing (Wednesday) than what I experienced as a family member with an incarcerated loved one,” Plumb said.
The prison is missing more than guards. Blouin described a conversation he had with one inmate.
“He had had trouble finding access to dental care,” Blouin recalled. “I think he said four to six months was the waiting time for a toothache he had had. So that to me is concerning.”
Gov. Spencer Cox is asking the Legislature to transfer inmate healthcare responsibilities away from the Department of Corrections to an agency he says is better equipped, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services.
The new prison is built on prime mosquito habitat and inmates have complained of bites in the warm months when they go outside to recreate or walk between units for meals for classes. The local abatement district has been working with the Department of Corrections to mitigate the infestations.
Blouin said he favors the Legislature funding the abatement and buying repellant for the inmates.
“The prisoners shouldn’t be suffering from mosquito bites because we situated them there,” he said.
But Is Utah getting its $1 billion worth from the new prison?
“I think that remains to be seen,” Plumb said. “It’s sure something a lot of us have skepticism about, right.”
