Staff at the Riverside correctional facility were told last week that the purpose of the faciiity will be changing and three staff positions out of 30 will be eliminated.
Officials from the Montana Department of Corrections (DOC) met with staff Tuesday morning to tell them clients from the state’s DOC infirmary will be moved from Lewistown to Boulder. Plans call for closing Riverside October 8 and reopening with the new clients December 10 after building renovations and staff training.
Some Riverside employees expressed dissatisfaction with the way in which the decision was handled and the implications for local staff and community.
The decision to close the 25-bed DOC infirmary at Lewistown was announced June 7, with the assertion that the 23 inmates would be placed and the wing closed July 31. Plans called for 13 of the inmates to go to the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) nursing home at Lewistown, three inmates to be discharged and the remaining seven to go to the Montana State Prison.
At the time, officials described the majority of the inmates, those slated to go to the nursing home, as “elderly dementia patients who have mobility and other medical conditions” making them no risk to public safety. The seven proposed to go to the prison were described as having medical and mental health needs.
That closure was described as a budget measure intended to save the DOC $2,709,650 by the end of June 2019.
Those projected placements and savings did not work out as planned, however, leading to the decision to move 20 or so infirmary clients to Boulder.
In an interview Tuesday afternoon, DOC Director Reginald Michael and Deputy Director Cynthia Wolken said current clients at Riverside – 22 adult female offenders – will be sent to “appropriate placements” at the Elkhorn Treatment Center, Billings Women’s Prison, or intensive community placements.
Other than the three employees to be laid off from Riverside, employees will be retained with “possible position transfers” to other DOC facilities such as the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, the Billings Women’s Prison and Pine Hills Correctional Facility, they said. Once Riverside is repurposed, it will need additional nursing staff, said the DOC.
Pay for security staff at Riverside will be protected for six months, during which time a new collective bargaining agreement will need to be worked out, said Wolken. A DOC human resources manager was on hand at Riverside last week to discuss the options with employees, she said.
Wolken said nine staff at Lewistown had been given options for taking other DOC jobs and only one is interested in coming to Boulder.
Michael and Wolken said budget was still at the root of the decision to close the Lewistown infirmary and move Riverside clients out. The adult women being served at Riverside are basically the same population being served at the Elkhorn Treatment Center and the Billings Women’s Prison, they said. The state has contracts with those facilities that require minimum payments no matter what the census count is at any given time, they explained. The demand for DOC services for adult women was simply not high enough to justify three facilities, they said.
Wolken described the clients slated to move into Boulder as having “significant emotional and mental health issues.”
Riverside employees who spoke with the Monitor asked for anonymity out of concern over their job prospects. They questioned the way in which the notice was handled, alleging a lack of transparency. The decision was announced as a “done deal” that left staffers with two weeks or less to make major life decisions such as selling a home and uprooting families, they said.
The staffers also said the Recovery and Reentry Program at Riverside had a very low ten percent recidivism rate, expressing concern that the value of the program was not thoroughly considered.
In addition Riverside staffers voiced concern over the impact on the community’s economy.
In response to Monitor questions about the concerns expressed by employees, Wolken said the decision to change Riverside was made September 25, the day it was announced. Staff members were given “the notice they were entitled to under state policy and union bargaining agreements,” she said.
Regarding the recidivism rate, Wolken said, “The Riverside Recovery and Reentry program is too recent and the population too small to calculate a meaningful recidivism rate, which measures the percentage of inmates released from prison who return to prison within three years.”
According to the DOC Clinical Services Division Administrator Connie Winner, clinical staff at Riverside will be trained for their new duties prior to the offenders moving in and their training will be done during their work schedule. Security and other non-clerical staff will be trained during the transfer period, said Cynthia Davenport, Acting Human Resources Director for the DOC.
Winner said in response to a Monitor question that she was not aware of any of the incoming inmates being prior Montana Developmental Center clients.
Jefferson County Commissioner Leonard Wortman said he did not expect a major impact on the local economy from the Riverside changes. Elkhorn Treatment Center has been cutting staff because of a low census, and the changes at Riverside should reverse that trend and increase staffing there, he said.
