Echo Glen Fence Project Still On Hold -- Other Security Devices Now Sought

"State Rep. Mike Patrick, noting that many inmates of the Echo Glen Children's Center are dangerous, vowed to find $3 million in the state budget to build a fence around the facility."

- The Seattle Times, May 4, 1984.

More than seven years after Patrick's pledge, it's become highly unlikely that a steel fence, 8 to 10 feet high, will ever be built around the overcrowded Echo Glen Children's Center, despite vows and public outcries that date back to the early 1980s.

The detention complex, on 70 wooded acres at the end of Highway 18 between Issaquah and Snoqualmie, houses 207 juvenile offenders - well over its rated capacity. Escapes from the 25-year-old institution were common, but reached a focal point in March 1984 when a 15-year-old youth escapee shot a guard.

That incident triggered a public outcry from nearby residential neighborhoods for better security, and insistence that the sprawling complex be fenced.

Money was in fact appropriated several years later, but then the state Department of Health and Social Services, which oversees Echo Glen, ran into King County's sensitive-areas and wetlands regulations. It seems that more than one-fourth the fence would have to be built in wetland areas.

"That raised questions as to whether or not a fence was the best way to handle security issues," said Bob Casel, an architect in the DSHS capital programs office.

The entire project now is on hold, he added.

When the Legislature meets next year, the Juvenile Rehabilitation Division probably will recommend that $1 million earmarked for a fence should be used instead to enhance existing security at Echo Glen.

That suits Jim Giles, Echo Glen's superintendent. He has never been a fan of the fence proposal.

There's been a marked reduction in the number of escapes over the past six or seven years. Last year, for example, there were 20 escapes, and half of those took place while inmates were away from Echo Glen - at a medical appointment, on an outing or other off-campus activity.

In 1983, by comparison, 40 juveniles fled from Echo Glen.

"We just don't have a lot of kids anymore who bolt and run off," Giles said.

Renovation of 13 cottages where inmates live is near completion, Giles said, but there wasn't enough money to install security windows.

"That million dollars could be used for those windows with maybe enough left over to install a modest electronic security system in parts of the campus which are particularly vulnerable to escapes," he said.

One problem, though, would be triggering of the sensors by the large number of wild game living on or near the complex.

Echo Glen is under a Superior Court order to reduce its population to its rated capacity of 176 by next March.

"The only way to do that is divert incoming offenders to other juvenile institutions, maybe forcing those facilities to release inmates into the community before sentences are completed," Giles said.