Kinross prison disturbance cost Michigan nearly $900,000
LANSING — The total cost of a September disturbance at Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula was close to $900,000, a Corrections Department spokesman said.
The vast majority of the $888,320 bill was wages, overtime, meals and accommodations for about 100 emergency response team members who were sent to Kinross from around the state and stayed there about a week, Chris Gautz told the Free Press Tuesday.
On top of those personnel costs of about $741,000, the cost of repairing damage to the prison was just over $86,000, he said. The department also spent close to $94,000 moving prisoners involved in the disturbance to higher-security prisons, according to records the Free Press obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act. Gautz said most of those transportation costs were personnel costs and they are included in the $741,000 figure.
Damage in the Sept. 10 incident included at least one fire, smashed windows and sinks, busted-out walls, damage to telephones and other communications equipment, trashed files and graffiti, department records show. One unit was left unlivable for several days. Though nobody was injured, emergency response team officers armed with shotguns and pepper spray guns stormed the housing units and zip-tied the wrists of nearly all of the more than 1,200 inmates.
Corrections officers say it was Michigan's first prison riot since 1981, and that officials temporarily lost control of the facility. Gautz and other prison managers insist there was no loss of control and the disturbance should not be described as a riot.
The department found money within existing budgets to pay the unforeseen expenses, Gautz said, adding he is not aware of any specific cuts made to other budget areas to help cover the cost.
The damage occurred after officers stormed the housing units to remove instigators, following what was described as a peaceful march in the yard by more than 400 inmates.
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The prison houses about 1,280 mostly Level 2 (a low-security classification) inmates, but many of them are serving life sentences for murder or other serious crimes. They live in dorm-style housing units without bars on the windows and are able to move at will into a yard area, which is ringed by housing units and the administration building. Though some prisons have gun towers — which are frequently not manned — Kinross has no gun tower.
Gautz said issues raised by the inmates included wages paid for prison jobs -- 74 cents to $3.34 per day -- access to the process for getting sentences commuted by the governor, and the quality and quantity of prison food.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.