Overcrowding At Echo Glen: New Urgency To Old Lawsuit

SNOQUALMIE - Sex offenders room together at Echo Glen Children's Center.

Fights among members of at least seven youth gangs are frequent.

Chairs are thrown at staff members in the dining room.

Aggressive behavior in general is getting worse.

That's what several Echo Glen employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say.

"We've fought this problem since the 1970s," said Ron Siskar, president of Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) Local 1681.

"Since then, the state hasn't done anything. They take credit when the juvenile population goes down as a normal course, but say nothing when overpopulation is serious.

"We are understaffed, overpopulated and in a real dangerous situation."

This week, the struggle by the union to force the state Department of Social and Health Services to comply with a 9-year-old court order to ease overcrowding - estimated to be about 25 percent now at Echo Glen - is about to come to a head. On Friday, the employees union will return to Thurston County Superior Court to seek enforcement of the 1982 ruling.

Overcrowding is common at all five of the state institutions for youths, acknowledges Jerry Wasson, director of the DSHS Division of Juvenile Rehabilitation. However, he said, efforts are made to move inmates more quickly into community-group care, transitional housing and independent-living training.

But the WFSE says working and living conditions have become

extremely dangerous for inmates and staff at the 23-year-old juvenile institution.

"Staff morale is at an all-time low," said one employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Overcrowding is so bad that more time is being spent on management and custody than with treatment and counseling."

Last August, Echo Glen Superintendent Jim Giles and union representatives told members of the state Senate Law and Justice Committee about deplorable conditions at Echo Glen. For example, they said, four employees had been assaulted in one week of July last year.

Inmates arm themselves with homemade weapons - teaspoons sharpened into knives, forks with all but one tine removed to make a dagger, employees say.

Echo Glen was built to house 208 teenagers - 16 in each of 13 cottages. Two cottages, however, were shut down more than 10 years ago because of insufficient operating funds.

Today, the institution has permanent beds for 176, but for many years the inmate population has far exceeded that number, according to reports from employee-management meetings. The official count on July 10 was 218 inmates being held for crimes ranging from murder, rape and robbery to drug offenses, burglary and malicious mischief.

Such overcrowding was the crux of a grievance the union filed in 1976. The WFSE's complaint was arbitrated before the state Personnel Board and upheld four years later. The board ruled that no more than 16 inmates should be housed in a cottage at Echo Glen, but that in an emergency 18 would be allowed for no more than two weeks.

An appeal of that ruling by the DSHS was dismissed by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Carol Fuller in 1982. She also ordered the DSHS to comply with the arbitration decision.

"It's ironic," said Mark Brown, deputy director of the WFSE. "The Personnel Board can order an agency to do something, but to get that order enforced someone has to go to court."

Giles said he could not comment on the pending litigation. Wasson, however, feels the department has complied with both the Personnel Board and court rulings.

Last week, population summaries at the five institutions - Echo Glen, Maple Lane School in Thurston County, Green Hill School in Lewis County, Mission Creek Camp near Chehalis, and Naselle Camp in Pacific County - showed all were over the limit.

Wasson said plans are under way to add 74 community beds at Green Hill by this fall.

"These have been rough times," he said. "We cannot overspend our state appropriation; can't hire more staff anywhere." Some staff positions at Echo Glen, he added, have been left vacant because of not enough money.

The July 10 demographic report shows that only 61 of the 218 inmates are in custody for the first time; 112 others have committed from three to eight offenses.

"These are very aggressive and street-wise kids to begin with," said one staff worker. "We're shuffling them around . . . sending residents from high-security cottages to less secure cottages because of the overcrowding. We have sex offenders rooming together . . . One sex offender is living in a conference room."

Gangs are also a big problem.

"They're all fighting each other and we're in the middle," said the staffer. "All the big names are involved - Crips, Bloods, BGD . . . as well as Chicano gangs from Eastern Washington."