Wednesday, September 9, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
21
Washington prison to offer nature videos in solitary
By Rachael La Corte
Associated Press
SHELTON, Wash. (AP)
— For dozens of maxi-
mum-custody prisoners at
Washington Corrections
Center, 23 hours each day is
spent alone in a small cell,
with an hour to walk or run,
also alone, in a recreation
room with high concrete
walls and a metal-grated roof
that offers a view of the sky.
In the coming weeks,
these prisoners — which
include the most danger-
ous and unruly of the over-
all prison population — will
have the option of using the
hour outside of their cells to
watch sunsets, mountains
and underwater seascapes
through a program that
brings the outdoors inside,
via video, projected on a
blank recreation room wall.
The hope of corrections
officials is that by offering a
regular visual dose of nature,
inmates will be calmer,
guards will deal with fewer
outbursts or violent interac-
tions, and overall safety in
the unit will increase.
The so-called “Blue
Room” is based on a pro-
gram of the same name in an
Oregon prison that has seen
some early success with pris-
oners in its solitary confine-
ment wing.
Officials at Washington
Corrections Center have
installed a projector in one of
the recreation rooms and are
working out the final details
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before making it available
to inmates in their intensive
management unit.
Starting a few weeks ago,
in a room painted blue and
decorated with plants, prison
officials starting showing
the videos to prisoners with
intellectual disabilities who
are part of a special unit at
the prison.
The prison, about 30
miles northwest of Olympia,
is the first in the state to set
up the videos, though oth-
ers have expressed interest,
including Washington State
Penitentiary at Walla Walla.
“If there’s something that
shows promise and is going
to make it a better work envi-
ronment for our staff and for
offenders, that’s something
we need to take seriously,”
said Steve Sinclair, the state
Department of Corrections’
assistant secretary over
prisons.
The blue room is the
latest endeavor from
the state Department of
Corrections’ partnership
with the Sustainability in
Prisons Project at Evergreen
State College in Olympia.
Through that effort, prison-
ers at various facilities have
been involved in programs to
breed endangered frogs and
threatened butterflies and to
grow native flowers and prai-
rie grasses.
Last year, Washington
corrections officials met with
their counterparts at Snake
River Correctional Institute
in Ontario, Oregon, which
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has been using its room since
April 2013.
“When we started using
the blue room what we
noticed, right off, is that
there was a lot less chaos in
the units,” said Renee Smith,
Snake River’s behavioral
health services manager.
There have been fewer
situations where guards
have had to forcibly extract
inmates from their cells
because of misconduct, and
fewer overall crises with
inmates struggling with anxi-
ety or depression, she said.
Correctional officers have
the discretion to let inmates
use the room at other times,
including if they’re having an
anxiety attack or some other
type of issue.
Smith said the prison has
received calls from correc-
tions officials around the
country about the room, and
a few from overseas.
The idea for the Oregon
program was sparked by
Nalini Nadkarni, a profes-
sor at the University of Utah.
She was called by officials at
Snake River who saw a 2010
taped TED talk she gave.
In that 5-minute talk, given
while she was a professor at
the Evergreen State College,
Nadkarni spoke of the impact
nature could have on those
who have no access to it:
specifically, prisoners held in
solitary confinement.
Nadkarni, who had pre-
viously worked with prison
officials in the Sustainability
in Prisons Project, proposed
putting nature pictures on the
walls of the indoor recreation
yard in maximum custody
units.
Snake River officials were
intrigued and wanted to take
it one step farther and use
videos. Nadkarni and other
researchers visited the prison
earlier this year to interview
inmates and guards and to
look at disciplinary data.
Nalini said that their prelimi-
nary analysis shows that the
unit that has seen the nature
imagery appears to have a
lower rate of disciplinary
issues with inmates than the
units that haven’t seen the
videos.
Josue Torres-Rubio, a
22-year-old from Wapato
who is serving time on
charges for robbery, residen-
tial burglary and possession
of a stolen car, said he’s
looking forward to the
video option during his
time away from his solitary
cell.
“It would be good to
watch something other than
the walls,” he said.
Currently, statewide, there
are 837 prisoners — or 5 per-
cent of the overall prison
population — being held in
a single cell. Those prisoners
range from those who have
committed an infraction in
the general population and
spend no more than 30 days
in solitary, to prisoners who
are a threat to staff or oth-
ers, and can spend more than
three years in segregated
housing. Others are there for
their own protection.
Nadkarni said that pro-
grams like the blue room
are essential rehabilitation
tools for prisoners, many
of whom will ultimately be
released.
“Whatever we can do to
men and women while incar-
cerated to make them more
human, less violent, less
anxious, it seems that ben-
efits society as a whole,” she
said.