19th century prison falls short of 21st century needs

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By Times staff | Saturday, March 22, 2008 |

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The Quad-City Times Editorial Board toured the Iowa State Penitentiary Marc…
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Look at the crumbling, 154-year-old sandstone block walls and the conclusion is inescapable. Iowa needs a new maximum security prison. Money that could be used to rehabilitate Iowa prisoners is spent maintaining, repairing and heating a 19th century fortress that barely met 20th century needs, much less those in this 21st century.

Gov. Chet Culver has said it is a foregone conclusion the next maximum security prison will be built in Fort Madison. A small group of legislators suggested Iowa consider other locations, but Culver seemed adamant. Before committing to Fort Madison, we encourage Culver to do something he has yet to do as governor: Visit the prison.

The Times Editorial Board’s five-hour tour on March 4 opened our eyes, and minds.

The prison opened in 1854 on a Mississippi River bank in the most populated part of the Iowa territory. Early census records show the entire territory with about 97,500 people. Forty percent of them lived in the four-county area around Fort Madison. Scott County at that time had about 3,000 residents, about twice as many as Polk County.

Today, Fort Madison is the site of three prisons and two work camps.

- The old Fort has 582 men in maximum security cellblocks designed for 549.

- The medium security Bennett unit has 180 in dorms designed for 152.

- The five-year-old Critical Care Unit mental health treatment center has 185 in jail pods (much like the new Scott County jail) designed for 200.

- Two farm camps hold 150 in space designed for 180.

Initial plans call for building a new maximum security prison on the site of one of the farm camps in a rural area about a mile from the pen. The mental health treatment unit and the medium security Bennett unit would remain.

A walk through each of these units left us neither afraid nor hopeless. The Fort consumes visitors with a profound sadness. Men who left their Iowa communities as feared felons settle into routines of work, some recreation and what must be interminable idleness.

Child sex abuser Randy Aneweer, 44, of Waterloo, reclines on a bunk and balances his prison account checkbook. He’s normally on the prison plumbing crew, but has been off for nearly a year with an injury. Oprah talks from his portable TV, crowded in his closet-sized cell with books and magazines. He takes a daily shower down the hall. He can hear, but not see inmates in adjoining cells.

Most of the inmates are in these century-old single cells. Those who follow rules have an opportunity for daily recreational time. Those who don’t stay put.

Rick Nebinger, 47, is a lifer from Davenport in the woodworking shop where he reports to work each day. Wood shop wages top out at less than $1 per hour. We watched him inspect birch veneer wrapped as trim on a piece that will be the Waterloo library’s next reference desk.

These aren’t the human warehouses of the 19th century. The maximum security portion includes woodworking and upholstery shops that teach marketable skills and provide furniture for Iowa libraries, public university dorm rooms and Habitat for Humanity homes. Indeed, some of those homes are framed out by inmates who never leave the maximum security confines.

Daniel Klemme, 45, of Davenport shakes with palsy from his wheelchair in the penitentiary’s mental health unit. He’s awaiting the return of a correctional officer to finish a chess game. Klemme is back in prison after at least a decade of short jail and prison terms for trespass, harassment, indecent exposure and stalking.

Medical treatment for mental illnesses is a critical, new mission for the prison, but not one of Iowans’ choosing. The CCU mental health treatment prison is the result of a federal court order from litigation brought by an inmate. Yet the entire Fort Madison management staff agrees it is an essential function in 21st century corrections. The Fort struggles to find psychiatrists and psychologists to staff the unit.

Meanwhile, vanloads of inmates are taken every day to Iowa City for treatment at University Hospitals. In 2004, University Hospitals provided $11.6 million in physical health care for 4,882 Iowa Department of Corrections inmates. The care represented 11 percent of all services provided by the hospital.

Neither the university nor its hospitals existed when territorial leaders decided Fort Madison would be the best place for a prison. Today, instead of 40 percent of Iowa’s population, the four-county area around Fort Madison holds 3.6 percent. Warden John Ault says that labor pool provides the prison’s 340 correctional officers. But the Fort struggles to fill many of the other 200 positions, including physicians, psychologists and nurses.

Undeniably, the Fort’s $36 million annual payroll is vital to southeast Iowa. Notably, about a third of the payroll goes to employees who live in Fort Madison. Two thirds of the employees live elsewhere.

But providing economic vitality to Fort Madison is not among the Department of Corrections missions. More and more, those missions require services not available in this corner of the state.

Iowa’s next maximum security prison should not be built to sustain the Fort Madison economy. It won’t be built to make inmates more comfortable. In fact, it won’t be built for inmates at all.

Iowa’s next maximum security prison needs to be built for Iowa taxpayers. It needs to provide services that have been proven to reduce recidivism as well as operating costs. Yet, Iowa lawmakers are being asked to make this critical decision without considering those future costs. The limited discussion so far has been solely about the economic impact on Fort Madison.

Between the work camps, Bennett medium security dorm and the Critical Care Unit mental health prison, we’re assured that Fort Madison’s economy will continue to be driven by the Department of Corrections.

A question for the governor and lawmakers is this: Will the location of Iowa’s maximum security prison be made by those representing the interests of Iowans in this century and the next? Or will elected leaders simply defer to decisions made by Iowa’s 19th century territorial leaders?

This decision must revolve around Iowa’s needs for the next 150 years.

Gov. Culver should convene a task force to assess those needs and the cost of providing them in southeast Iowa. Begin that process with a visit that will surely open the eyes of lawmakers as it opened ours.