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UTAH STATE PRISON — Prison staff, officers and inmates all agree that building a new prison is a must — regardless of the location.
Without an upgrade soon, sustainable healthy living is difficult to maintain, given the compound’s out-of-date and decrepit facilities.
The state prison near Draper is used as the primary prison site for Utah. In fact, when the original building was erected 64 years ago, it held only 700 inmates.
Now the original building is used as the intake facility for thousands of prisoners.
“In our system we have 7,000 incarcerated right now. In Draper we have 4,000,” said prison warden Scott Crowther.
Since 1951, the prison's population has grown exponentially.
“We need more beds because we're really crowded,” William Hopkins, an inmate of eight years said.
In the beginning, the prison was just one building. Since then, it's expanded: Seven buildings now fill the property.
Some buildings are more than a mile apart from each other.
“Just transporting people from this facility to this facility can prove very dangerous,” Crowther noted.
Shuffling services, resources and inmates from one place to another is the first major problem, he said.
“We'll take a space that was originally designed for one thing and we'll retrofit it to try to meet with the need we have for our inmates today,” Crowther said.
For example, the prison visitors' area is now a dental clinic. The women's prison was once a youth facility.
Crowther said oftentimes the funding they have goes toward trying to cram new things into old spaces — very old spaces.
“This is Alcatraz technology," he said. "This is the same type of technology they have there.”
In fact, general population cells still rely on a lever system to open and close doors. Some of these doors even have "meal slots" to slide food under for the inmates.
Additionally, there's no room to hold the programs the prison needs.
“If we can get programming and therapy that will help us to reintegrate into society, that's probably one of the best things to do,” Inmate William Hopkins said.
Crowther said the key to solving the laundry list of problems is a new prison.
“I think we need it. I think our staff deserves it. I think the offenders that live inside our current facilities deserve it,” Crowther said.
Countributing: Sara Jarman
