Corrections officers concerned for system and selves

David Miville, a corrections officer at the Lakes Region Facility said that when he tells his friends he works with 80 inmates, separated by a plexi-glass door and armed with a walkie-talkie, they say "you must be crazy".

"But, I love my job," he declared.

Miville, who lives in Bristol, is one of some 70 of the 97 employees of the New Hampshire Department of Corrections (DOC) who expect to lose their jobs with the closure of the Laconia prison in June. He had sounded out police departments and security firms only to find they were not hiring, but said "I'll wait for the call back," anticipating that the changes underway at the DOC would lead to a volatile mix of overcrowding and understaffing that would leave the department with no option.

Miville was echoed during a Friday interview by three of his colleagues on the 3 to 11 p.m. shift — Corporals Michelle LaBelle and Laura Desautelle and Claudia Cass — all of whom anticipated being called back to work in the corrections system. They shared Miville's commitment to a career in corrections, along with his apprehension that the lay-offs, accompanied by further reductions in rehabilitative programs and services for inmates, would threaten the stability and safety of the prison system. Although the four expressed anxiety for their personal futures, it was matched by concern for the department, both officers and inmates, for which they worked.

"Our mission is to protect the public and the inmates," Miville declared. "With the changes they're talking about, the system won't protect anyone."

The Lakes Region Facility is the last stop for inmates before they return to society. Cass said that originally the facility provided a number of programs designed to increase the chances of a successful transition, but virtually all have been eliminated or diminished by prior rounds of budget cuts. "We're warehousing," she said flatly.

While none disagreed with the decision to close the Laconia facility, which requires extensive renovation and is expensive to operate, they all questioned how the closure was being managed. "They don't have a plan," declared Desautelle. "It's a band-aid approach. A quick fix."

When Governor John Lynch recommended closing the facility in his budget address, he suggested that the deportation of some 100 illegal immigrants in the prison system could be accelerated in partnership with the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Another 100 would be transferred to the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin and the remaining 100 would be released to home confinement or on parole.

Miville said that he know of no inmate who has been deported.

The inmates to be placed in Berlin later this month will be housed in a gymnasium converted into a dormitory. "The sex offenders won't be segregated. The gangs won't be segregated," said Desautelle. "And a prison designed for direct supervision, one officer to a tier, will be secured by roving patrols. Imagine, 112 inmates in a gym with an officer patrolling on the hour. It will explode."

Miville said that there have been several assaults against corrections officers by inmates at the New Hampshire State Prison in Concord and recalled that last year gang violence erupted in the gymnasium at Berlin where transferred inmates will be housed.

Cass said since the governor proposed his budget pressure to empty the facility has grown. "They're trying to release people before their sentence is complete," she said. "Required programs have been shortened." A 12-week anger management program has been trimmed to one day, noting that all will receive a certificate, leaving no way to differentiate between those who completed the full course and those who did not.

Likewise, Cass said that inmates are being paroled without homes or jobs to go to. "A parole officer I know visits three parolees living under a bridge in Manchester," she said. "Many of these inmates need services, especially for drug and alcohol abuse," she continued. "And we spend an hour of each shift dispensing medications. Those they release are not going to find the programs and services they need in the community," she warned. "The state is going to pay for these people one way or another."

"About 100 inmates have been released in the last several months," said Miville, "and more than 20-percent of them are already back ."

Apart from leaving the system without sufficient staff, Desautelle said that the lay-offs, which would fall most heavily on the younger officers, would hinder the recruitment of personnel to replace older officers as they retired. Miville said that he had only 10 classmates when he attended the Corrections Academy, a nine week regimen held at the Police Standards and Training Academy in Concord, and only nine graduated the next year. "It's not a job everyone wants to do," he said. But, it offered job security along with health and retirement benefits and now there's no job security."

Nevertheless, Miville said he would look for other work, but "wait to be called back. I like working with inmates. They're decent people who made some bad decisions and if I can help them turn their lives around, that is what I want to do."

Cass expected to keep her job, but at another facility. "They're laying off nine corporals, the least senior nine, and six or seven sergeants. And they can't demote to save their jobs."

Desautelle, a corporal in her sixth year with the DOC, said "I have a summer business running a candy store at Weirs Beach and by the time summer's over I expect to be called back."

LaBelle, who just purchased a home and housed her parents, remarked only half joking 'we'll all live in my car." Near to completing her degree in forensic psychology, she said that would accelerate her education and compete with parolees for a job. "They'll have the advantage because I'll be overqualified," she laughed.