Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008

Coyote Ridge gears up for growth

By Joe Chapman, Herald staff writer

Oh, the number of useful things a cell phone can be good for: calling for roadside help, texting a friend, breaking out of prison.

Don't laugh -- state Department of Corrections officials sure aren't. Cell phones were never meant to be cell phones, and a demonstration at the newly expanded Coyote Ridge Corrections Center on Monday showed how prison officers keep watch for them when searching inmates and their living quarters.

Monday's demonstration at Coyote Ridge was in the complex's training center, which used to hold administration offices before they were moved into a new building as part of the prison expansion.

The expansion is nearly completed, with the plumbing, electricity, heating and cooling, cameras, computers and remote-activated gates now working.

When the new prison space is filled, it will house 2,048 minimum- and medium-security prisoners, in addition to the 600 prisoners kept in the original minimum-security facility a half-mile away.

Initially prisoners were to start being moved in to the new buildings this month or next, but Washington's fiscal woes have prompted the state to move the date back to February.

Unless that plan is delayed again, the first 65 prisoners will move in Feb. 3, with 65 more coming each week through the end of March.

And Coyote Ridge officials plan to be ready for them, using the extra time to train.

"This is kind of weird. Two plug-ins for one radio," Officer Sheila Riches said Monday as she examined the set-up in a mock cell used for training purposes.

She picked up the radio, a small boom box that in and of itself would be OK in a prison cell. But when she opened the battery compartment, she discovered the hidden cell phone inside.

Cell phones have been used as prison contraband for about as long as they've been around. But they've become a greater problem as the devices have gotten smaller and cell phone towers have expanded coverage into rural areas where some prisons are located.

Coyote Ridge officials said they've been pushing harder to confiscate any cell phones at the facility since a convicted killer in Texas was caught using a cell phone to threaten a state senator in October.

In the hands of prisoners, cell phones can be dangerous for a number of reasons.

"Cell phones allow an offender an opportunity in an unmonitored way to continue to conduct criminal activity," said David Bailey, associate superintendent at Coyote Ridge.

With a cell phone, an inmate could order a hit on someone, make threatening calls, arrange to have drugs or weapons smuggled in, or plan an escape, to name a few dangers.

And more and more, cell phones are equipped with Internet and e-mail capabilities, opening up more chances for unmonitored communication and misuse.

Washington's corrections department doesn't track confiscated cell phones as a separate contraband category. But an informal survey found that in a two-year period, the most cell phones confiscated at any one prison was three, while several facilities hadn't confiscated any.

Chad Lewis, a corrections spokesman in Olympia, acknowledged those numbers sound low, but said cell phones in prisons can be much more dangerous than other types of contraband.

"You can only pass around a cigarette so many times, but you can pass around a cell phone countless times," he said.

In the Texas case, the prisoner, Richard Tabler, was found to have shared his cell phone with inmates on his cell block, and they made 2,800 calls in a month, The Associated Press reported. Tabler's mom was charged with a crime for buying minutes for the phone.

To stem the problem, some prison systems, including Washington's, are exploring the idea of jamming cell phone signals in prisons, a proposal that has hurdles with the Federal Communications Commission. Washington's corrections department also is working to train dogs to specifically detect cell phones.

At full staffing, Coyote Ridge will employ more than 600 workers. Bailey estimated it has less than 300 hired so far, with the rest of the positions to be filled when the expanded prison goes online.

Officers already on the job have stayed busy with tasks such as flushing toilets to keep the S-curves in their plumbing from drying out and inspecting every cell -- 27 times each, so far.

The officers look for and find things that could be used as contraband after the move-in, perhaps a screw left over from the construction that gets tracked inside, said Doug Shima, an officer who lives in West Richland and is one of the new hires.

The prison complex is such a large facility, the officers can spend this time getting to know it before inmates move in, Shima said.

"All these buildings and all this construction, there's a lot of searching that needs to be done," he said.

w Joe Chapman: 582-1512; jchapman@tricityherald.com