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North Dakota officials struggling to find prison space
A private Minnesota prison is giving North Dakota more time to find space for inmates who have been housed there. The Appleton prison, operated by Corrections Corporation of America, notified North Dakota in November that it no longer had room for North Dakota prisoners. As of early this week, the state still had 48 prisoners in Appleton, which is more than 300 miles from Bismarck. North Dakota warden Tim Schuetzle said the Appleton prison has given North Dakota until the end of March to find another place for them. CCA offered to take some prisoners to another prison it operates in Colorado for the same price per day, per inmate, $54, Schuetzle said. But the Colorado lockup is about twice as far from Bismarck as the Minnesota prison, and the Colorado prison will only take 27 North Dakota prisoners, he said. Space for 45 more prisoners will come on line in the state later this year, Schuetzle said. Twenty new beds will be available at the James River Correctional Center in June, when kitchenettes on four floors of the six-story prison in Jamestown are remodeled. A new regional jail in Rugby should be operating in September, and the Corrections Department can send 25 inmates there, Schuetzle told legislators Tuesday. One option has disappeared over the years. The state Corrections Department has housed some prisoners at county jails, but many are now full or refusing to take state inmates. Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, who chairs the Legislative Council's interim Budget Committee on Government Services, said county jails that do have room are becoming choosy. "The counties say, 'We don't want your state guys. We want those minimum security federal guys.' There aren't that many (federal inmates) out there," Carlson said. North Dakota has about 1,400 state inmates, 162 of them women. In 1991, the state had about 400 inmates.
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