Redirect the Prison, Don’t Move It

How would you like to save a cool three-quarters of a billion dollars? That kind of change would rattle nicely in pockets around the state. We can do it. All we have to do is leave the Utah State Prison where it is.

Developers want the land and Draper City wants them to have it. They will get big tax dollars from development in the area if the prison is relocated. Here is the rub: taxpayers will pay the $1 billion to relocate and the developers will get the profits. There is, of course, the usual chatter about the increased taxes revenue paying for all this and there’s some truth to that — eventually. Meanwhile, we, the taxpayers, will suffer the interest, liability and headaches. This deal isn’t stacked in our favor.

The State Prison Relocation Committee says buildings at the prison are in bad shape and need remodeling, which will cost $250 million. They want to tear it down and move it instead, costing three-quarters of a billion more. The state has spent a million dollars just studying the deal. The taxpayers paid that, by the way, not the developers.

Fred Willoughby is the chairman of Utah’s No Prison Relocation Committee. He is adamant the prison should stay where it is. He wants to improve it, turning it into a place that remakes those within its walls, rather than warehousing them. He first proposed his plan in the 1970s, and he’s bringing it forward again.

The three-part plan, which would apply to prisoners who are minimum security risks, is intriguing, and the acreage within the prison compound provides the resources to carry it out. The first part is a Center of Learning, a kind of university or trade school where inmates would learn to question, study, do research and use their minds instead of wasting their years of incarceration. The second part is a hospital to heal inmates, body and soul, with classes to teach family relationship and marriage skills and counseling for drug and alcohol problems, for starters. Part Three would bring commerce into the prison. The enclosed land would house small industries where goods would be created to sell in a prison store. Inmates would develop abilities in wood and metalworking, upholstery, automotive, agriculture, computers, construction trades, electronics and a host of other marketable skills, in addition to sales and advertising know-how. They would leave better prepared for life on the outside, making them less likely to end up back in the slammer. Their time in prison could be life changing and society would be the beneficiary. Leaving the prison where it now stands provides the resources, the customers and accessible volunteers to make this plan work.

Willoughby believes prison can be something better than it now is. His illustrious 55-year career in law enforcement has given him workable ideas. At age 16 he began helping his grandfather, who was also in law enforcement, transport prisoners between jails. The three years he spent wiping out gang problems in Boulder, Colorado, was a great tutorial. He has been a police officer, a parole officer, an interrogator and a college professor teaching all the above. He has also been a prison guard at the Utah State Prison, so he comes at prison reform from an educated perspective with viable solutions for improving the prison system.

Willoughby readily confesses that sentiment colors his desire to keep the prison in place. Woven into his prison experience is the story of Crazy Joe, an inmate in the prison who acquired his nickname because he was ugly mean. During a verbal fray with another guard, Crazy Joe screamed: “Treat me like a man! Just because I have a number on my back doesn’t mean I’m not a man!” Fred pulled him aside and in their ensuing conversation said, “You are a child of God, just like me, and I’m going to tell you something. You are a baby. You want to be treated like a man but you act like a baby. Real men don’t do the things you are doing.” Stunned at being called a child of God, Joe said, “Nobody ever told me that before,” and he wept. From that moment, Joe began to change. Within a few years, he won release from prison, got married, and died six months afterward, a free man.

This and other experiences left Willoughby with the indelible belief that there’s a spark of knowing right and wrong in every man, even the most hardened criminals. We can fan that flame and give these men a better chance. Prison reform could help, with hearts and hands to pump the bellows. In addition, Utah could set a model for other states to do the same.

Willoughby’s No Prison Relocation Committee needs help. They want to talk to families of prisoners currently housed in the Utah State Prison. When an arrangement similar to the above 3 point plan was presented to prisoners and their families in the 1970s, a five-minute standing ovation resulted. Reactions today would surely be the same.

Forward this column on to any who deal directly with prisoners in the prison or any interested in the issue. Contact Willoughby at fred@willoughby.me or (801) 703-0283 to offer help. Three-quarters of a billion dollars could be hanging in the balance.

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