Bethany Tabb, Courier-Times Staff Writer
More than 20 sex offenders moved yesterday into the New Castle Correctional Facility, and around 400 more are soon to follow.
Doug Garrison, spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Correction, said the prisoners will come from the Plainfield Correctional Facility. The rest will gradually move to the New Castle facility over the next six months, he said.
These new prisoners will fill 420 empty beds as part of a plan by GEO Group, the private corrections firm that operates the prison. Prison Supt. Jeff Wrigley said many of those units were left empty after all inmates from Arizona were transferred out of the facility. The first 24 prisoners arrived yesterday.
Increasing the prison's population of sex offenders is essentially getting back to its original mission, Wrigley said. The New Castle facility was originally intended to treat special needs prisoners when it was built in 2002, he said. That includes sex offenders, drug abusers, chronically ill and mentally ill offenders.
Those prisoners will be treated with programs designed to help change their behaviors. Wrigley said GEO's goal is that when prisoners are released, they won't commit the same crimes again.
"From GEO's perspective, it's an opportunity to try to have a positive impact," he said.
Though the transition will be a change for prison employees, Garrison said it should be a positive change. In his experience, he said sex offenders are more complient, highly motivated and better educated than average prisoners.
A high population of those prisoners usually results in less misconduct and fewer assaults on staff members or other offenders, he said.
The Plainfield facility's population is made up almost entirely of sex offenders, Garrison said, as are other facilities. It isn't uncommon to house prisoners of similar offenses together, he said.
In April 2007, a riot led by Arizona prisoners broke out at the facility. Those offenders are no longer at the prison, Garrison said, but the prison's new population will probably decrease the likelihood of a similar event happening.
Wrigley said the transferring in of sex offenders is not a cause for public alarm. None of those offenders will be housed in the minimum security unit outside the electric fence, he said. They also won't perform any kind of community service work.
When prisoners are released, Wrigley said they're returned to the communities they came from. There will not be an increase of sex offenders in New Castle just because they're housed in the prison, he said.
"There's no threat to public safety whatsoever," he said.
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