More than 600 to be transferred from prison

CAMERON, Mo. -- A temporary arrangement that added hundreds of inmates to the population of a northwest Missouri prison in the mid-1990s is coming to an end.

The opening of new prisons elsewhere in Missouri has relieved the medium-security Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron of having to house 644 minimum-security inmates, state Corrections director Gary Kempker said Friday.

Over the next several weeks, the minimum-security inmates will be transferred to other minimum-security prisons, primarily in St. Joseph and Jefferson City, Kempker said.

Their departures will reduce the population at the Western Missouri Correctional Center from its "saturation housing" level of 2,619 down to its original capacity of 1,975, Kempker said. The prison will lose 107 staff positions, but most employees will fill existing vacancies at the prison while some may be reassigned to fill vacancies elsewhere in northwest Missouri.

Kempker said the minimum-security inmates have been living in so-called open bay dormitory housing, which is not suitable for confining medium-security inmates.

The extra beds were added to the Cameron prison in the mid-1990s as the state struggled to house an inmate population that was rapidly growing and would ultimately double, to about 32,000 from 1991 to this year.

Traffic hazards

New prisons were built around the state, but some did not open immediately because state revenue was slumping just as money was needed to staff and equip the new facilities.

The reduction of the population at Western Missouri Correctional Center will be welcomed by some residents who live near the prison, which sits next to the maximum-security Crossroads Correctional Center where U.S. 69, U.S. 36 and Interstate 35 intersect.

Nearby residents say visitors to the medium-security prison are creating traffic hazards as they wait to drive onto the grounds.

Visitors' vehicles cannot enter until 30 minutes before visiting hours begin -- but some arrive several hours early to be near the front of the line, residents say. Their cars fill part of the narrow, dead-end road leading to the prison's entrance and occupy a side street as well. Some make U-turns in the street or turn around in residents' driveways.

Resident Laura Olsen said she was "scared to death" when she came over a hill into the crowd of cars one day. "If there was one more car on the road, we'd have hit them," she said.

Some residents have said the easiest solution would be to give visitors earlier access to the prison parking lot. But prison superintendent Steve Moore said security considerations dictated the 30-minute policy.