Published: June 22, 2008 12:33 am      

A view from behind bars

Maximum-security North Branch Correctional Institution opens doors to new housing units

Tristen Buskirk and his little brother are likely having a summer vacation very different from their friends back home in North Carolina.

Things started out in a rather typical fashion this week as Tristen, 13, and Justen, 9, and their parents, Carl and Tera Buskirk, visited family in the Cumberland area. It just so happened that a relative of theirs works at North Branch Correctional Institution and, on Saturday, NBCI held an open house for employees’ families as well as the general public.

It was an opportunity the Buskirk family couldn’t pass up. Not that Tristen seemed to mind as he sat on the wrong side of a two-person cell midway through the 90-minute tour by Lt. T.B. Beal and the prison’s top officials. Justen preferred the top bunk of the steel frame bed, yet to have a mattress installed.

“It’s small,” said Tristen of the cramped quarters, but “I could spend a night here.”

“Not if you knew you were going to be here for five years,” Tera Buskirk said. “It’s not somewhere you want to be.”

The Buskirks toured parts of the $171 million maximum-security state prison looking over the inmates’ library, classrooms, dining facility, living and showering spaces and outdoor recreation areas. As the first of two new housing units open for business as early as next month, the facility can hold about 1,500 inmates.

Safety is a concern at any prison, officials said, but NBCI has high-tech tools to help correctional officers complete their jobs better. From the front of a computer-filled control room inside Housing Unit 4, prison Warden John A. Rowley said Nintendo was a great tool to train today’s officers. Every aspect of an inmate’s cell life can be controlled by a touchscreen video monitoring system inside the control room, he said. When the doors open and close or whether a cell has water or not is up to the staff on duty.

Rowley said he’s worked at nine different institutions in three states and he’s “never been as impressed” with the high-tech controls as with NBCI. The control room itself is inside a glass-like, nearly impenetrable box able to be seen inside from all sides. The lack of privacy doesn’t concern Rowley, though.

“It would take them several hours to get through that (pane),” Rowley said of a possible incident. “It’s state-of-the-art.”

By then, officers could have pushed a single button to transfer the control of the facility to the primary mission control room on the campus along U.S. Route 220. From the control room, officers also have the ability to use chemical agents, such as tear gas, to quell inmate misconduct.

Under a “direct supervision” atmosphere in which officers routinely are in contact with inmates, “that’s safe for us,” Rowley said.

“We’re trying to house the most serious inmates,” he said, and precautions are taken to avoid conflict.

The Buskirks followed some pretty high-profile footsteps in their tour of the prison. Top prison officials from across the country, along with officers from prison systems in Saudi Arabia and Africa, have visited the facility in recent weeks and months.

Tristen and Justen learned a number of interesting facts about prison life and staff procedure during their visit. Troy Michael and his colleagues oversee 103 inmates in the food production and cleanup areas. When the two new housing units are onine, they’ll help feed nearly 4,500 meals per day for fellow inmates and another 500 meals daily for prison staff. Breakfast begins as early as 4 a.m., Beal said, while lunch begins at 10:30 a.m. and dinner about six hours later.

“At 4 in the morning, you don’t get a whole lot of takers,” Beal said.

About eight inmates — with passes — are allowed into the newly opened library at any one time. And come visiting time for inmates and their families, there can be a kiss on the cheek and a brief embrace, but no kissing on the lips. Conversations are not monitored but inmates are watched carefully.

The first tour group of about 20 people also learned that inmates get paid to go to class — at a rate of about 95 cents per day.

Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.