
It appears to be the end of the road —or rather a ferry
route — for a prison older than Washington state
itself.
Indeed, our very own Alcatraz.
McNeil
Island Corrections Center, home to about 500 inmates and a
place where 245 DOC employees work, is closing after 135 years of
protecting the public and punishing and rehabilitating felons.
It’s uncertain what this will mean for the Special Commitment
Center, also housed on the island for sexually violent
predators and run by the state’s Department of Social and Health
Services. But DOC stands to save about $6.3 million a year,
according to a press release.
“This will save the most money without compromising the safety
of our staff, the offenders and the public,” DOC Secretary Eldon
Vail said in the release. “The budget crisis is causing us to make
some of the most painful decisions in our agency’s history.”
Here’s what
I wrote about McNeil in an entry last year:
The territorial prison there got its first prisoners — two men
who’d sold booze to Native Americans and one who’d robbed a fort
store — in 1875,
according to HistoryLink. When I visited the place last spring,
the man who provided escort for me on the ferry ride told me an
interesting fact. It wasn’t built for Alcatraz-like security
reasons (i.e. its icy cold water surroundings) but rather because
that’s just the way everyone commuted back then.
This prison’s older than the state itself, also giving it
the unique distinction of being the only prison that started as
a territorial facility, which then became a federal pen in 1890,
and then a state prison in 1981. It was supposed to be temporary to
run it to allieve overcrowding, but now almost 28 years later, it’s
still going.
It’s expensive, as you might imagine, to haul inmates — and all
the things that go to incarcerate them — on a ferry. That’s the
likely reason for its possible closure.
If they do close it, perhaps the state could open it up to
tourists — just like Alcatraz — and house a museum there.
Share on Facebook