ACI Opens Doors to New Women's Facility, Max Security [Gallery]

The Rhode Island Department of Corrections opened the doors to the Gloria McDonald awaiting trial and minimum security facility to members of the media last week.

The building, located on the grounds of the Adult Correctional Institutions, opened last December and is housed in what was once known as the Reintegration Center. The building was originally refurbished to house male inmates on their way back into society, but the extra hands needed to staff the building were never hired. So the building never opened.

Now, the building houses up to 213 female offenders awaiting trial or being held in medium security.

The facility, formerly a mental hospital is clean, modern and well-lit. The renovation cost $624,000.

The building reflects a modern approach to corrections, with an emphasis on education, substance abuse prevention, parenting programs and community service programs.

Warden Carol Dwyer said the administration of the facility is as thoughtful and progressive as possible. For many women who end up here, their stay marks the first time they’ve had a medical check-up or confronted the fact they haven’t been taking good care of themselves.

The facility includes a complete medical treatment facility, a pharmacy, on-site OB/GYN, dental hygienists, 11 registered nurses, a clinical nurse specialist, psychiatrists and social workers.

“The fact is our inmates tend to be people who haven’t taken good care of ourselves,” Dwyer said. “They come in with a great number of medical issues that are untreated and our job is to provide diagnosis and treatment.”

The average stay for a woman in the Gloria McDonald facility is about 5.5 months. Seventy-three percent of offenders were committed for non-voilent and drug offenses. Most were white (68 percent) followed by black (17 percent) and Hispanic (12 percent). The average cost per resident was $214.31 per day.

Many inmates come to the facility pregnant and the ACI is equipped to handle it. Expecting mothers make all their routine appointments and they are given prenatal vitamins.

Dwyer and ACI Director A.T. Wall led reporters through the medical center, a two-inmate cell, the cafeteria and a recreation area where a number of inmates sat watching TV on furniture you might find in a college dormitory common area.

The atmosphere was orderly cordial. Inmates smiled and greeted the immediately-recognizable Wall. Aside from the security features and prison-issued clothing, the image of the stereotypical prison doesn’t accurately reflect the goings-on inside the McDonald building.

But at the maximum security facility deeper on the ACI grounds, the perception of prison as a gritty, harsh place almost doesn’t capture the steely atmosphere of the second-oldest operational prison in the United States.

The facility opened in 1878 and was originally designed to house 252 inmates. An addition was built in 1924 adding 198 cells. Know as “steel city,” inmates live in tiny cells on three levels, connected by steel stairs and narrow walkways with just a narrow railing protecting correctional officers from plunging to the concrete floor.

Everywhere are thick walls of concrete, huge metal doors clanging loudly as they open and shut, chain link and barbed wire. During the tour, inmates lay on their slender cots after lunch, a time when many sleep, Wall said. Some watched an action flick starring Nicholas Cage on their clear plastic TVs — see-through to eliminate a hiding place.

On the third level of cells in one of the blocks “imagine you’re standing here, all the cell doors open and you’re standing here with just this between the floor and you,” Wall said, tapping the railing.

Looking down, the hard red floor seems very far. There is nothing aside from time added to a sentence to prevent an inmate from reaching between the bars, or the row of inmates to charge an officer once the doors open in unison, Wall said.

Maximum security is where the inmates who have the longest sentences for the most severe crimes go or where people from minimum and medium security end up after behavioral problems.

Of the 417 inmates housed there last week, 10 percent were in segregation.