The Garden City Telegram

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AP: Budget cuts force prisons to cut programs

Published 6/26/2009 in News

HUTCHINSON (AP) — A vocational welding program that has taught job skills to inmates at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility for 40 years is ending because of the state's budget problems.

The welding course is one of several prison programs that have been cut back or dropped across the state because of budget problems, prison officials said Wednesday.

Inmates in the yearlong welding program, which began in 1969, were taught skills that would qualify them for a job after their release. The program kept inmates occupied in prison, and employment was key to keeping them from returning, prison officials said. With the training ending, they are worried about the effect inside and outside the prison walls.

"It's not just HCF feeling the pinch, it's statewide," Hutchinson Warden Sam Cline said. "Not only are there increasing numbers, but because of a loss in funding, the idleness within the prison creates a security risk. What are we going to do to keep all the people productive. With no money? It's a conundrum."

The Department of Corrections has cut about $23 million from its budget since the 2009 fiscal year started last summer, department spokesman Bill Miskell said. It has closed facilities in El Dorado, Osawatomie, Toronto and Stockton, and the Labette Correctional Conservation Camp in Oswego.

It has also ended contracts for parolee reporting centers in Wichita and Topeka, and residential bed programs in Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City.

The Hutchinson prison, which houses 1,700 inmates, has reduced staff for sex offender treatment and a GED program and closed a dormitory that once housed at least 60 inmates with drug and alcohol addictions.

"The spine of all opportunity is really being downsized," Cline said. "The programs serve two purposes: To help rehabilitate offenders, so the likelihood of failure is less when they're released, and it also serves a very important role for safety of staff."

The vocational program is one of several the Kansas prison system contracted through Southeast Kansas Education Service Center. Duane Krueger, assistant vocational director, said all of the center's programs are being cut back to four days a week, or by 20 percent.

A welding program at the Lansing Correctional Facility was eliminated, Krueger said, as well as a construction program in Norton and a heating and cooling program in Winfield.

The cuts comes even though corrections officials understand the merits of education programs for inmates, Miskell said.

"The two most important things to success in not coming back to prison is having a decent place to live and a decent job," he said. "We know reducing or eliminating education will likely have an impact on that."

And he said corrections officials are aware that more reductions may be required in the next fiscal year.

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