Young Inmate Development Program Underway At Garner

By Andrew Gorosko

A specialized program is underway at Garner Correctional Institution in which young prisoner participants who have been identified as gang members are receiving schooling intended to help them obtain their general equivalency diplomas (GED), the prison warden told members of the Public Safety Committee for Garner Correctional Institution on June 5.

Garner Warden Scott Semple said that the prison’s youth development program, which started about six weeks ago, is designed for inmates who are 19 to 21 years old. The program currently has five participants and Garner officials hope to raise the enrollment to ten prisoners, he said.

The program is designed for inmates who formerly were incarcerated at Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire.

“It’s working out very well,” Warden Semple said, adding that the program provides prison staff members with new duties.

The program participants are held in “close custody” in a specialized housing unit in the high-security prison where they are kept isolated from other inmates.

Having Garner as the site for the program allows the state Department of Correction (DOC) to have the Manson Youth Institution focus on housing prisoners who are 14 through 16 years old.

The goal of the program is to have the inmates renounce their gang affiliations, obtain their GEDs, and broadly not return to prison after they are released from custody.

On June 5, Warden Semple told committee members that Garner held 650 inmates that day. Of that number, 318 inmates are mental health prisoners, 191 prisoners are general population inmates, 136 inmates are incarcerated while awaiting trial on pending charges, and five are in the youth development program. The warden said that 56 of the 650 inmates were being held in the prison’s gymnasium due to inmate “overflow” conditions.

During May, the prison held one of its semiannual “shakedown” events in which correction officers searched for any contraband that inmates had in their possession, the warden said. No serious issues were uncovered during that event, he said.

Also, the DOC is planning to make some improvements to the prison’s gym by installing expansion joints in that structure, Warden Semple said.

When the gym was constructed, no expansion joints were placed in the gym, he noted. Failure to have expansion joints can result in cracking problems.

The state Department of Public Works would oversee the gym project. The gym would need to be cleared of any prisoners when the construction project is underway, Warden Semple said.

In another matter, Warden Semple said the DOC will be installing a new telephone system in Garner for use by prisoners.

The improved telephone system will allow the DOC to more extensively monitor the content of prisoner telephone calls, the warden said. With the new telephone equipment, the DOC will be able to listen to the telephone calls between prisoners and those prisoners’ visitors, he said.

Also, Garner will soon receive new control panel equipment through which correction officers control the physical security aspects of the prison such as doors.

The new control panels will allow DOC staff to remotely control the electricity and water provided to inmates’ cells, Warden Semple said.

The existing control panel system is 20 years old and spare parts are no longer available, he said. The $275,000 project will include “touch screen” control panels.