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State considering plan to consolidate two women’s prisons

The Washington state Department of Corrections is considering closing the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women in Belfair and relocating women housed there to the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor.

Department leaders held an online meeting with interested parties about the possibility of folding Mission Creek into the Gig Harbor women’s prison on Thursday, Sept. 22. State Corrections Secretary Cheryl Strange emphasized many times during the meeting that the department hasn’t made a decision on Mission Creek and has not established a timeline for doing so.

“We are not close to this being a done deal, in any stretch of the imagination,” Strange told those at the meeting, largely DOC employees and contractors and family members of incarcerated women.

Both prisons well below capacity 

The plan is part of what DOC calls the Best Bed Project, which led to closure of the Larch Corrections Center for men in Clark County. The department calls Best Bed Project its effort to ensure inmates receive “the mental health, educational, programming and health care access best suited to meet their needs.”

In this case, the project could mean consolidating two relatively nearby women’s prisons, neither of which is close to its capacity. The two facilities are about 27 miles apart.

The Gig Harbor facility has room for 934 prisoners, but is only 63% occupied (590 inmates). The Belfair prison’s capacity is 321 offenders, but it is only 43 percent full (137 prisoners).  

If DOC combines the two at their current occupancy rates, the WCCW would still only be about 78 percent full.

Corrections leaders said Thursday that projections indicate the women’s inmate population is unlikely to significantly rise in the next 10 years.

DOC’s staffing issues 

The consolidation could also help DOC find its way out of a staffing problem.

The smaller Mission Creek facility is fully staffed with a stable work force. But DOC says that  the Gig Harbor women’s prison “experiences significant staff vacancy and turnover, mandatory overtime, and frequent program closures and cancellations.”

DOC hopes merging the prisons might lead to less overtime and a more stable staff situation at the combined facility. 

Under the plan as explained on DOC’s website, the Gig Harbor facility would be renamed the Washington Women’s Corrections Complex. The department would move all “staff, programs and resources” from Mission Creek to Gig Harbor. 

The department would convert the Mission Creek campus into a training center. The new Mission Creek would focus on gender-specific training for staff in the department’s Women’s Prison Division. 

Corrections Deputy Secretary Sean Murphy said if the proposal moves forward, DOC would effectively try to move the entire Mission Creek community — including inmates, staff and administrators — as a group from the Belfair campus to Gig Harbor.

The fence outside the Washington Corrections Center for Women on Bujacich Road in Gig Harbor.

Services and programs

Women currently at Mission Creek would have access to expanded services in Gig Harbor.

“We believe we would get everyone access to more programs, more services,” Murphy said at Thursday’s meeting. “The key to that is to bring the magic of Mission Creek Corrections Center with it.”

Two women who identified themselves as former inmates spoke during the online meeting. Both said that while incarcerated, they dreaded going to the lower-security Mission Creek campus because it offered fewer programs to residents.

But others at the meeting told DOC administrators of their high regard for Mission Creek, describing its supportive and caring staff. That’s the “magic” to which Murphy referred.

Either way, one of the formerly incarcerate women said, “these moves are going to be traumatic” for inmates.

WCCW and Mission Creek

The Washington Corrections Center for Women opened in 1971. It is commonly referred to as being in Purdy though it’s on Bujacich Road in Gig Harbor. The facility houses women deemed to require minimum, medium and maximum security levels.

The Gig Harbor prison’s annual operating budget is about $36.7 million and it has 309 staff members. It is widely known for its Prison Pet Partnership program, in which prisoners provide pet boarding, grooming and training services.

Mission Creek, which opened as a women’s prison in 2005, is a minimum-security facility. Its annual operating budget is about $11.3 million and it employs 85 full-time staff, according to a DOC fact sheet.

Corrections officials said if the move goes forward, their intention would be to retain or expand prison programs. That includes the pet partnership and Mission Creek’s program in which inmates care for a species of endangered butterflies.