Gregoire: No more felons to be freed early

The state Department of Corrections is scrambling to find space for inmates at out-of-state prisons after Gov. Christine Gregoire on Wednesday called a halt to the freeing of felons as a solution to prison overcrowding.

Gregoire said she's "outraged" that the Department of Corrections (DOC) on Friday ordered that scores of felons who had violated the state's version of probation be released from two King County jails. She ordered DOC to keep such offenders behind bars until they finish their full sentence — with no exceptions.

"I will not accept [lack of] bed space as a reason for conditional release," Gregoire said in a sternly worded letter to DOC Secretary Harold Clarke. "The department will find space."

Clarke said he would follow Gregoire's orders.

"We will begin immediately to review options for making additional jail and prison space available so that all community custody violators remain incarcerated until their violations either have been addressed through a hearing, or they have served the full term of their sanction," Clarke said in a news release.

The felons released Friday all had served their prison terms, but remained on community supervision, meaning they were required to check in with DOC staff regularly and possibly take drug tests. They had been taken into custody because they had violated those requirements.

The violations can result in new jail stints of up to 60 days.

The offenders released Friday included at least 21 with convictions for assault, 15 for drug crimes, nine for burglary, three for rape and one for kidnapping.

Community corrections officers said this week that DOC has allowed them for years to "conditionally release" those felons, rather than keep them in jail. This allowed felons who violate conditions of their release to avoid jail and not have to appear before an administrative hearings officer, so long as they plead guilty to the new violation.

DOC is bursting at the seams and has few alternatives for jailing those felons. It has funding to house 14,440 prison inmates, yet is housing 17,900. In addition, DOC oversees 25,000 offenders on community-corrections supervision.

DOC rents beds in 14 facilities, including county jails, across the state. It also rents more than 950 beds in Minnesota and Arizona from the nation's largest private jailer, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). On Wednesday, DOC officials asked CCA if it could take even more inmates, and the company said it would be happy to oblige, said Louise Grant, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee-based company.

"We talked to them today," she said. "We recognize they may have an emerging, immediate need. We certainly stand ready to assist them however we can."

Jim Thatcher, DOC's out-of-state superintendent, said plans were in the works to send at least 100 more inmates to CCA prisons within several months.

But doing any major transfers quickly is difficult, he said. "Quite frankly, with the logistics of putting together transport and [inmate] screening, it's not like saying, 'Tomorrow we'll move 100 out.' It's more complex than that," Thatcher said. He said DOC was also working to send more inmates to county jails across Washington.

DOC was at its contract limit in all jails. But jail officials in King and Snohomish county said DOC could likely renegotiate their contracts for bed space.

"It's not an overnight thing. It's not impossible," said Maj. William Hayes of the King County jail.

Hayes said his staff had repeatedly asked DOC to limit the number of its offenders sent to the county jails over the past few months. The situation became a crisis last week, when DOC housed 304 inmates at two King County jails — far more than the 220 beds it rents from King County.

All of the released offenders were ordered by DOC to report to their community corrections officer by 5 p.m. Monday. But fewer than 50 percent followed that order, according to several community corrections officers. The DOC hadn't released a figure by Wednesday night.

Though the agency initially reported releasing close to 100, on Wednesday it reported the true number of offenders to hit the streets was 59.

In a statement Wednesday, DOC denied that it had planned to consider releasing up to 105 more offenders from a DOC-run facility in Shelton, Mason County, where they were being held after violating the terms of their prison release. That contradicts what DOC administrator Lori Ramsdell-Gilkey told The Times on Tuesday. The DOC statement didn't provide a reason for the contradiction.

The releases last Friday prompted Republican members of the state Senate corrections committee to demand an emergency meeting with Clarke to address what they called a "dire" situation. Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, said Clarke agreed to send prison inmates out of state, and then fill the freed-up prison beds with the offenders that the county jails couldn't accommodate.

"I think we've come up with a good solution," Carrell said. "This is keeping kids and neighborhoods safer."

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporter Justin Mayo contributed to this report