NB woman to head corrections department

By T.W. Budig
ECM capitol reporter
Jailbirds are sometimes judged as not looking the type -the same sometimes might be said of the person holding all the keys.
Minnesota Commissioner of Corrections Joan Fabian comes across as soft spoken, considerate, almost gentle.
She might be a non-profit executive, and in a sense is, but her business involves keeping some 7,200 inmates - some entirely unrepentant and dangerous, she notes - under lock and key.
Indeed, Fabian, of North Branch, is less the aberration than the natural. Her interest in corrections sparked in college, and she immediately entered the field as a probations officer upon graduation.
That was 37 years ago. And there are no regrets.
ìVery few days in my 37 years I have not enjoyed coming to work,î she said.
Criminals can turn their lives around. And if a person works long enough in corrections, the successes become evident, she explained.
ìYou say something fifty times and it doesnít work. And then the fifty-first time they decide to listen,î said Fabian, a person whose personal resoluteness was tested early as child growing up in a big family.
Although never feeling any fear during her career, a stoutness of heart cultured by having seven brothers, Fabian is a shy person, she said.
Yet Fabian did not leap at the correctionsí commissionership.
She knew corrections was facing budget cuts - some $56 million for 2004-05 - and it was only during an interview with Gov. Pawlenty, who impressed her, that Fabian decided to accept the job if offered.
Now Fabian oversees a department with a $876 million biennial budget, 3,700 employees, and about 300 more inmates than they expected.
The new prison at Rush City will be full this July, two years earlier than projected. And projections have state prisons needing to absorb another 1,000 inmates by the end of 2005.
Fabian points to expanded laws and longer sentences as determiners in the upswing in the prison population.
ìWeíre dealing with more and more people,î she said.
The state is not looking at building a new prison. But corrections is taking steps to solve the lack of beds.
For one thing, the department is proposing to introduce double bunking at its prisons at St. Cloud and Stillwater. Theyíre going to start cautiously, Fabian explained.
Just 100 beds at a time at each place.
The problem with these older facilities is their basic infrastructure does not allow for much inmate population growth, said Fabian.
The maximum security prison at Oak Park Heights - the prison within the system - will have no double bunking.
Lower security facilities have extensive double bunking.
A more controversial proposal is to shift about 200 short-term offenders, or inmates serving sentences of six months or less, to county jails or workhouses.
Proposed long-term solutions to overcrowding include construction of five new units and conversion of existing units at the regional treatment center at Faribault - 2,286 beds by 2010.
Yet another option under consideration for short-term offenders is a new prison built by the private sector or consortium of counties.
Unlike Wisconsin where inmates are routinely sent to out-of-state prisons, Minnesota just occasionally sends prisoners out-of-state, more to thwart gang retaliation or contracts than as population control, Fabian explained.
Itís about $20 a day cheaper to keep an inmate in-state than send them elsewhere, said Fabian.
While the media regularly reports on colorful sheriffs yanking televisions or radios out of their county jails to heighten the harshness of doing time, Fabian sees other considerations.
For starters she notes the difference between doing a week in a county jail and five years in a state prison.
Prisoners, after all, need to be controlled.
ìIím real concerned about my 1,800 corrections officers who have to work in the prison,î she said.
ìThese inmates have already shown that they can be violent and irresponsible. I think if anyone would come in and take a tour, theyíd say no one is being coddled,î she said.
And thatís fine. To a point.
ìIím not saying they shouldnít do hard time; I donít think you have to also make it inhumane,î she said.
It should be remembered that 99 percent of inmates will be released. Hence, the importance of having programs in prisons.
ìI think it would be unthinkable to not to try to effect change,î said Fabian.
Odds of inmates returning to state prisons are markedly lower in Minnesota than nationally. In Minnesota, the recidivism rate is about 24 percent after three years.
Nationally, the figure is double - 47 percent.
Still, the debate on what constitutes mollycoddling continues.
Just recently, one Republican lawmaker called for the removal of desserts from the prison menu.
The state spends $3.29 per day to feed inmates, said Fabian. ìThatís a little over a dollar a meal, she noted.
ìI donít think at $3.29 per offender itís extravagance,î she said.
Fabian views inmates as crossing the human spectrum.
Some are violent, unchanging, ought to remain in prison for good. Others are people whoíve made bad decisions and are paying the price.
But sheís not naive, sheís been in corrections too long for that.

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