Hundreds of times in the past six years, inmates at the Washington Corrections Center for Women have tested positive for illegal narcotics.
KIRO 7 first started digging into the issue of drugs behind bars at the prison known as “Purdy” at the urging of a worker there. That Department of Corrections source called it an "epidemic drug problem” that “our facility managers still haven’t come up with a plan to deal with or cease the drug influx into our facility."
The results of a public records request, filed with the DOC by KIRO 7, revealed that inmates at the women’s prison near Gig Harbor tested positive for an illegal narcotic 262 times between Jan. 1, 2010 and Aug. 7, 2015.
Many of the same inmates tested positive time after time, despite being incarcerated in a secure facility.
Surveillance video another
at the Monroe Correctional Complex collecting multiple bundles of illegal drugs that someone on the outside threw over the facility's fence in January. The source said, the video is proof illegal narcotics are finding their way into the hands of inmates, many of whom were high at the time they committed their crimes.
Sattira Hutchinson is currently incarcerated at the Washington Correction Center for Women at Purdy. During her current sentence, Hutchinson has twice tested positive for benzodiazepine, a psychoactive narcotic known as “benzos.” She’s also twice tested positive for suboxone, which acts like an opioid. Hutchinson has also tested positive for meth.
All five of Hutchinson’s positive drug tests at Purdy happened within a 16-month span.
“It’s flabbergasting,” a man named Paul said when he heard about Hutchinson’s continued drug abuse. Hutchinson broke into Paul’s north Seattle home on Oct. 23, 2012 and took a new computer monitor still in its box. “I can’t imagine how somebody could be obtaining these drugs under the noses of the prison officials and the guards who are watching these inmates,” Paul told KIRO 7.
Paul didn’t want his last name used because he’s afraid of being targeted again.
King County Superior Court documents detailing Paul’s burglary list Hutchinson’s prior convictions for robbery, car theft, hit and run, other residential burglaries, DUI and five drug offenses.
With her long record of drug abuse, and her five positive drug tests while behind bars, Paul is skeptical Hutchinson’s time at Purdy will help transform her into a law-abiding citizen.
“I don’t think she has any intentions of becoming rehabilitated,” Paul told KIRO 7. “Is it all her fault? I don’t know. Now it sounds as if the DOC is enabling her to do this, and as long as she has access to these drugs and medications, she’s not going to be rehabilitated.”
Danielle Cannon is another inmate at Purdy whose drug use continues while she's in prison. DOC records show Cannon tested positive for meth five times in less than two years, and tested positive for opiates three times. Her mother was caught passing her meth and heroin during a visit to Purdy in 2014.
Even though the red flag about Cannon’s drug use was raised multiple times, she tested positive for amphetamines, meth and opiates at least two more times, just a few months after her mom was caught trying to pass Cannon drugs at Purdy.
KIRO 7 wanted to know how often meth, THC, Spice, opioids, pain killers and other illegal narcotics get into the hands of women at Purdy, without a prescription. The DOC documents provided in KIRO 7’s Public Disclosure Request revealed that 262 times since the beginning of 2010, inmates at Purdy have tested positive for banned substances.
Some of the tests were done at random.
Others were conducted after suspicions were raised.
Steve Sinclair, the DOC’s Assistant Secretary of Prisons, told KIRO 7 “as diligent as our staff are, some drugs can get through.”
KIRO 7’s Amy Clancy asked: "How are the same people getting access to drugs time after time after time if they're testing positive?"
“I couldn’t answer the question of how they’re getting access,” Sinclair responded. “Certainly, if we knew, we would stop it all. But we don’t. Know that we offer a wide range of chemical dependency treatment in the agency. There is chemical dependency treatment available at WCCW (Washington Correction Center for Women).”
Chemical dependency treatment is available, and can be considered mandatory for some repeat offenders: Failure to participate can result in a serious infraction.
Still, DOC documents showed some inmates tested positive multiple times, including Hutchinson and Cannon.
The DOC’s Sinclair told KIRO 7, even though the women are incarcerated, inmates at Purdy are not watched around the clock. “We create facilities and we confine offenders,” he said, “and they’re not necessarily surveilled 24/7, but that’s the challenge.”
Prison records show 187 women are responsible for all 262 positive drug tests since early 2010.
KIRO 7’s Amy Clancy recognized the name of one of the inmates who tested positive for three illegal substances: Mary Jane Rivas, who killed Seattle police Officer Joselito Barber in 2006 while she was driving a stolen vehicle, high on cocaine.
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When she crashed into Barber’s police cruiser, killing the rookie cop, Rivas had just been released from prison for a drug-related offense, 10 days earlier.
In 2014, when Rivas was about halfway through her more than 20-year prison sentence at Purdy, she tested positive for benzos, suboxone and synthetic marijuana known as Spice.
We showed those positive drug results to Officer Barber's family.
“She’s getting drugs, she’s not getting help, and potentially she’ll come out of there the same person she was when she came out and killed Lito,” Barber’s cousin, Ryan Barber, told KIRO 7.
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Joselito Barber’s father said, the fact Rivas is still doing drugs while behind bars lessens his faith in the entire DOC. “I wanted to choose to believe in the system and hope that they would monitor her and her life, so that when she came out, she would be a better person in society and hopefully prevent this from happening to somebody else,” Ernie Barber said. “It seems the DOC is letting us down. At what point does it stop, so other families don’t have to suffer the same things we’ve experienced?”
The man who helped put Rivas, and so many other felons at Purdy behind bars, is also frustrated by the repeat drug use. “I’m disappointed as a consumer of the DOC that it seems to be so easy to get drugs in there,” King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg told KIRO 7. “It is a big concern. It should be a big concern for the community, that when we send people to prison, they continue their addictions, even after their addiction has killed somebody.”
The DOC estimates, nearly 75-percent of inmates at all state correctional facilities have a high or moderate need for substance abuse treatment.
The DOC’s Sinclair said, all inmates have the opportunity to get clean while behind bars, and he’s hopeful the WCCW’s new superintendent, Dona Zavislan, will help lessen drug use at the women’s prison.
Cox Media Group
