The Washington state Department of Corrections recently signed a contract with the GEO Group to send up to 1000 inmates to Michigan.
Now, family members of Washington prison inmates say they don’t want to see inmates sent out of state to ease overcrowding.
Nicole Scott told a panel of lawmakers Wednesday that it took a toll when her husband was sent to Arizona the last time Washington sent inmates elsewhere.
“The contract breaks my heart for families that would be affected by this,” she said. “It put me in financial stress, my son, who hadn’t seen his dad for eight years before he was transferred, had been seeing him for a year and then his dad was gone again.”
Scott said she was speaking on behalf of other families because her husband would not be eligible to be moved this time around.
Washington prisons are bulging. But the deputy corrections secretary told lawmakers, at this point, there are no plans to ship inmates to Michigan.
Copyright 2015 Northwest News Network
