Last Chance...Plan to close juvenile prison seems a cruel joke to poverty - stricken Lake County

May 18, 2005

Behind the steel bars and razor wire of the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin are some of the most violent teen offenders in the state.
Martez Stewart of Jackson, for instance, was 13 years old when he stabbed a 14-year-old neighbor girl 33 times in 1998. Stewart used three knives on his victim, who broke the handles off two of them in her struggle to survive before he retrieved a third from the kitchen to kill her.
“We’ve got murderers, rapists, child molesters -- any kind of crime you can think of -- they’re all here. We’ve got kids serving life sentences,” says warden Frank Elo.
But he’s quick to add that not every teen offender is violent, or hell-bent on destruction. Many of the 480 inmates here are enrolled in a high school GED program, vocational training, anger management classes, Alcoholics Anonymous and other rebab programs.
“Eighty to 90 percent of the kids here take advantage of our programs because they want to improve their lives,” warden Elo says. “A lot of them are looking at their lives and saying, ‘hey, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here.’ For some, this may be their only chance to turn their lives around.”

POVERTY CENTRAL
Many in the small town of Baldwin feel that the prison may also be the last chance for Lake County, a contender for the most poverty-stricken county in the state. As part of the cuts needed to make up an estimated $772 million state budget shortfall, the Granholm administration plans to close the prison which opened to great fanfare in 1999. An executive order had scheduled to close the prison on May 31, but intense political pressure has bought it a stay of execution until Sept. 30, the end of the State’s budget year.
If and when the prison closes, it will mean the end of 230 jobs in a county where signs of economic ruin are everywhere (see sidebar).
“This is Michigan’s poorest county and I hate to see this happen to the people here,” Elo says. “If you drive around and see the housing here, you’ll see this is a devastated area.”
Even though the pay is less at this private prison than at State-run facilities, the consensus seems to be that these are good, middle-class wages for Lake County. Since 1999, the prison has paid out more than $43 million in wages and benefits -- a boon to the local economy. And there is a noticeable esprit de corps among the guards and staff who appear smartly dressed and professional.
In addition to the lost jobs, Lake County stands to lose more than $1 million per year in tax revenue paid by the privately-run prison, which is part of The Geo Group, Inc., based in Florida. Yet the county still has to pay for infrastructure improvements such as sewers, which were financed with bonds.
“This being Michigan, no one here grows up without witnessing the domino effect one lost job has on a family,” said Deborah Smith-Olson, a Baldwin bank president and chair of a low-income development program in a widely-distributed newspaper column. “And when hundreds of jobs are wiped out, neighborhoods and indeed, whole communities, are plunged into despair.”

THE BACKGROUND
Back in the late ‘90s when the Engler administration was looking for a site for a new “punk” prison to place a growing number of teen felons, virtually no community in the state would accept the facility. “Ironically, it was the state that all but begged Lake County to accept the prison in the first place,” Smith-Olson said.
The $25.5 million, 163,000-square-foot maximum security prison was built for the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation of Palm Beach, Florida in 1999. Today ownership is under the aegis of The Geo Group, a world-wide operation which runs prisons in the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and soon, the United Kingdom.
Designed for male felons ages 13-19, The Geo Group receives a per diem of $75.81 per prisoner per day, plus $5.5 million per year from the State in lease fees.
“That $75.81 is used to feed, clothe, education, provide health and dental care and religious services for all of the kids here,” Elo says. “It’s about what you’d get for a night in a motel.”
Initially, the “punk” prison was touted as a “bootcamp” in the press where youthful offenders would get drill sergeant-style discipline to straighten them up. Elo dismisses both of those terms as something that never panned out. “If anything, we’ve gone the rehab route of treatment and trying to turn their lives around with opportunities for improvement,” he says.
FUNDING ISSUES
For the first five years, a federal grant covered $17 million in expenses each year at the prison, with the State kicking in 10% of the costs. But the grant winds up on Sept. 30, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections, and in light of the State’s budget woes, a decision has been made to transfer the youth offenders to the Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, an adult prison where they would be housed in a separate dormitory.
Ironically, mixing teenagers with adult prisoners is exactly what the State hoped to avoid in the first place.
“Obviously, when you’re talking about 16, 17 and 18-year-old kids and putting them in with lifers and hard core prisoners, it’s just common sense that you don’t want to do that,” Elo says. He notes that there are more suicides among young prisoners in adult facilities, and less chance for rehabilitation.
In fact, Michigan’s adult prisons already house approximately 400 teenagers because the Youth Correctional Facility in Baldwin can only house 480. And Elo points to the Department of Correction’s own studies that the number of teen felons is likely to rise by more than 1,000 per year into the near future, rather than decrease.

WHO’S WHO
Although The Geo Group makes a profit on its prison ventures, it’s no cakewalk riding herd on 480 felons under the age of 20.
“Kids are probably the toughest inmate group I’ve worked with,” says Elo, who spent 28 years with Michigan’s corrections program before retiring to serve the past five years in Baldwin. “They’re young, immature and impulsive. Instead of discussing things or arguing it out, they start swinging, and it’s, let’s fight.”
And although a private company can make profits in prison management, he notes that millions can also be swept away in lawsuits engendered by the hazardous work. Guards can (and are) assaulted; at nearby Oaks Prison in Manistee, for instance a prisoner recently stabbed a guard in the eye with a pencil.
Currently, Elo is driving back and forth to the State Legislature in Lansing to argue the prison’s case for staying open. The prison has its critics: union members with the Michigan Department of Corrections have opposed the private prison from the get-go out of fear that all of the Michigan’s prisons could one day be privatized.
And a study by the prison watchdog group, Citizens Alliance of Prisons & Public Spending (CAPPS), claims that Michigan will spend more than $19 million this year on a prison whose offenders could be housed in facilities with lower security. The group claims that most of the inmates are low-risk prisoners who don’t measure up to the Level 5 classification of the most dangerous criminals for whom a maximum security prison is necessary.
CAPPS also claims that 58% of the Lake County prisoners were age 17 or older during its May 2003 study -- old enough to be legally considered adults and sent to adult facilities.

THREAT LEVELS
Elo notes, however, that it’s virtually impossible for any of the youthful inmates to be designated as Level 5 prisoners because Michigan’s guidelines for such are written specifically for adults.
For instance, an inmate must attempt to escape from an adult prison to become a Level 5 threat -- an impossible circumstance for Lake County prisoners because they’re in a youth facility. Another criteria is that a prisoner must be a gang leader; Elo notes that while there are many gang members in his prison, it’s irrational to assume that there could be hundreds of gang leaders.
“By the State’s own criteria, we can’t meet the standards for Level 5 prisoners,” he says. “We get a lot of kids classified at lower security levels, but that doesn’t correlate to how violent and how heinous their crimes are.”
He notes that killer Martez Stewart, mentioned at the beginning of this article, is a Level 4 prisoner. In other cases, a teen may be in for a lesser crime, such as breaking and entering, but may have a long history of unprosecuted criminal activities which make him a source of terror in his community.
“We have one kid in here for car theft, which doesn’t sound like much of a crime. But he stole a car and led a high-speed chase that killed two people and injured a little girl.”
Even the CAPPS report details prisoners who seem dangerous enough to warrant increased security: In 2003 there were seven first-degree murderers, 21 second-degree murderers, 108 armed robbers and 58 sex offenders.

BUDGET SPAGHETTI
Elo also spends his time in Lansing trying to untangle the budget spaghetti of determining whether the privatized prison operates at a lower cost than State-run facilities.
It’s a labyrinth task because the State’s $1.8 billion Corrections budget is interwoven among 60 prisons and more than 49,000 inmates.
“If you look at all of the line items in the Corrections budget you’ll see things like $90 million spent on health services spread among all of the prisons in the system,” Elo says, adding that it’s nearly impossible to break such figures down to get an accurate appraisal of the savings (or lack of) at the youth prison in Lake County.
Then too, a common refrain over local lunch counters and at coffee shops is that Lake County doesn’t have the political clout it needs in Lansing. Settled primarily by African-Americans in the 1920s and ‘30s as a black resort, Lake County is third in the state following Wayne and Genesee counties as having the highest per capita minority population in Michigan along with the deepest level of poverty. There’s a sense here that even a Democratic governor finds Lake County politically expendable in the budget crisis.
One guard confides that the staff has been offended by critics’ claims that they are poorly trained or even less intelligent than those who work in State-run prisons. It seems just the sort of slam you’d expect directed at residents of this depressed region.

SUICIDE & SCHOOL
Another criticism the prison received early on was that of suicide attempts.
Elo notes that the prison has had 61 attempted suicides but no deaths to date. No cell hangings, slashed wrists or leaps from windows. He claims that the level of attempted suicides may seem high because even verbal threats are considered an attempt at the prison.
“We take even a verbal comment as a sign of being depressed and take it seriously.”
Other critics claim that the level of rehabilitation at the Lake County prison lacks the depth of programming at State-run facilities. In a published report, Deb LaBelle, a human rights attorney from Ann Arbor, says she has interviewed inmates in Lake County who spend only 90 minutes a day in school.
But Elo says that the prison will graduate 125 prisoners this year from its GED high school equivalency program and maintains that there are opportunities for boosting self-esteem through a sports program, gym, counseling and group therapy. Unlike an adult maximum security prison, the inmates at Lake County don’t have to spend the majority of their time in their cells.

A SENSE OF WASTE
Whatever the claims of critics or defenders of the prison, you can’t drive away from the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility without feeling a sense of waste.
The State spent more than $25 million to build the youth prison six years ago in Michigan’s poorest county at a time when the rise of a generation of youthful “super predators” was predicted -- a crime wave that never materialized. Today, that investment seems at risk due to politically-motivated fighting over the role of private prisons versus State-run facilities.
And whether one believes that 17-year-olds could just as well be housed in adult prisons, one fact remains: Lake County stands to suffer deeply if and when its prison closes on Sept. 30.


sidebar:
Tough times in Lake County
Could your family live on less than $10,000 per year?
Take a drive down the main drag in downtown Baldwin and you’ll find a village that appears to be as bustling and hopeful as any small town in Michigan.
There are few vacant stores in a town which doesn’t have to worry about competition by big box stores or fast food chains, and Baldwin also thrives to some degree as a hunting and fishing destination.
But take a drive down the backroads outside of town and you’ll find scenes reminiscent of Appalachia 50 years ago, or that of a third world country.
In the area surrounding the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, there are acres of abandoned houses and dilapidated mobile homes lining a network of dirt roads with trash piles, old chairs and appliances scattered through the woods. Across from the prison sprawls a vast auto dump, spreading east like an industrial cancer across the sandy woodlands that merge with the Manistee National Forest.
This is a county that welcomed not only the youth prison, but also once lobbied to be the site of a low-level nuclear waste dump.
The U.S. Census reports that out of 389 households in Baldwin, 146 had less than $10,000 per year in household income in 1999. That’s 37.5% of the village.

• Out of 172 families in Baldwin, 28 are surviving on less than $10,000 per year (16.3%). Only 34 households in town (8.7%) had household incomes in the $50,000-$74,999 range which is a rough middle class standard for Traverse City or Petoskey.
• Per capita income in Lake County is $14,457, compared to $22,168 for Michigan as a whole.
• Median household income in Lake County is $26,622, compared to $44,667 for Michigan.
• And 19.4% of the residents of Lake County lived below the federal poverty level in 1999 when the U.S. economy was roaring, compared to 10.5% of Michigan residents as a whole.

-- by Robert Downes