THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 15, 1994 TAG: 9409150425
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE AND JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Two Hampton Roads shipyards are teaming up to market and build jail barges, and their first customer could be Norfolk.
Norshipco and Colonna's Shipyard Inc. plan to design, market and build the ``floating detention centers,'' said Doug Forrest, Colonna's vice president and spokesman for the project.
Norfolk Sheriff Robert McCabe is interested enough in the idea that he, city and state officials, and shipyard representatives are flying to New York City today to tour that city's prison barge. Norfolk has been ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice to find a solution for its overcrowded jail.
``We have an overcrowded jail, at times close to 1,400 inmates,'' Sheriff's Department spokesman George Schaefer said. ``We're in a situation . . . where we've been ordered to ease our overcrowding. This may be a cost effective way of doing it.''
Construction of the floating prisons also would help both yards compensate for falling demand for traditional ship repair services.
While the project is still in the development stage, the yards have been talking to other potential customers, including Boston and the state of Virginia, Forrest said. The two yards could produce their first barge within two years of getting an order, and could start producing them at a rate of one every three months, he said.
``We expect to get a contract within six months with someone for this,'' Forrest said.
The barges could be an inexpensive alternative to building new state prisons to house the additional prisoners that could result if Gov. George F. Allen's plan to abolish parole is adopted.
``We can deliver a complete turnkey facility to a government agency a lot quicker than that government agency could get the permits for and build a prison on land,'' Forrest said.
The yards could use the work. Norshipco has long relied on Navy overhaul and repair work for the vast majority of its business, but the Navy is shrinking and there isn't as much work.
As a result, Norshipco's permanent payroll has fallen to about 2,000 from 3,200 as recently as 1992. And some of those, about 300, are still on temporary layoff, said Gary L. Daniel, president of Local 684 of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, which represents many of the yard's hourly employees.
``Sounds like they're trying to keep us working,'' Daniel said of the prison barge idea.
Colonna's, traditionally a tug and barge repair yard, has also had its ups and downs. It emerged from a bankruptcy reorganization in late 1991 and has been scrambling for jobs to keep its 375 employees working.
Colonna's has been successful so far, but ``in order for us to continue growing and continue our profitability, we have to develop new markets,'' Forrest said.
Forrest estimates that their could be a market for nearly 30 of the prison barges in Virginia and elsewhere. He declined to say what the barges would cost or how much the yards already had invested in developing and marketing them.
It's unclear where Norfolk might locate a jail barge, but Forrest said that there is plenty of vacant and unused riverfront land that is either in heavily industrialized or undeveloped areas.
The nearly 400-feet-long barges, which require a depth of less than nine feet of water, would be permanently moored to the shore like a drydock at a shipyard. Each could house up to 800 prisoners.
They would feature work shops, administrative offices, a cafeteria, a noncontact visiting area, a clinic, a laundry, a barber shop and fresh-air recreation areas. They are designed to meet industry standards for correctional institutions, as well as maritime and other standards set by the Coast Guard and other regulatory bodies.
The barges are designed to withstand the wind and wave action of a so-called ``100-year storm'' - a storm of such severity that it only occurs on average every 100 years.
Norfolk is looking at the barges as a solution for the overcrowding for a number of reasons, Schaefer said:
The cost of a jail barge is lower than that of building a new jail of comparable space.
Construction may be quicker than building on land.
The city could lease the barges from leasing companies that would buy them from the yards, so that it wouldn't have to dip into its capital improvement budget.
Early last month, a report by the Justice Department concluded that the ``grossly overcrowded'' City Jail is a serious public-health threat where living conditions are ``offensive to elementary concepts of human decency.''
The jail's underlying problem, the report said, was severe overcrowding. The Justice Department ordered Sheriff Robert McCabe to come up with a plan by Sept. 20 to cut the jail's population nearly in half - from 1,377 to 750 - and implement the plan within six months.
Early this month, state corrections officials moved about 140 felons from the jail to several medium security prisons in an attempt to relieve the severe overcrowding cited by Justice. The city is requesting bids next week for a 300-bed extension of the existing jail.
Still, on Tuesday, the jail held 1,305 inmates, jail records show. A state panel predicted this year that by 1996 the jail will have 1,700 inmates.
The idea of building barges to free up jail space was first floated past officials in 1988, but then-Sheriff David K. Mapp Jr. shelved the idea. McCabe began talking informally with Norshipco and Colonna's Shipyard soon after he took office in January.
New York City is apparently the only locale in the nation to house prisoners on jail barges. But there have been problems. Two barges docked off Lower Manhattan were closed in 1992 after federal authorities threatened to file a lawsuit over jail conditions. A third barge - an 800-bed facility costing $161 million - opened in the Bronx that same year.
That barge - the one state and city officials are visiting today - has not been in violation of federal regulations.
KEYWORDS: PRISON BARGE CORRECTIONAL CENTER FLOATING JAIL by CNB