Re-entry alternative: Ship them to Arco, ID.

I am opposed to a pre-release facility in Kootenai County. We already have Spokane right next door and that is more than enough of a criminal activity generator for me and mine.

Having moved a number of times and having purchased a half dozen homes there were consistent factors in deciding which home to purchase. Some were non-negotiable and others could be waived because some factors were so important that they overrode the highly desirable wants. For instance, in my current home, the three bedroom closets are quite small, but the garage can hold four cars and shops are allowed.

When purchasing a home everyone has a different set of wants, needs, criteria, but some are pretty universal. First, the home you are living is the next to the last one you will live in. So, any home purchased has to be something others will be willing to buy, unless you want to keep a house and its mortgage for a long, long time.

What is the first, second and third rule in choosing a new home? Location, Location, Location. The most wonderful home in the wrong location will not be a good investment. A non-standard house that has only a miniscule percentage of home-buyers interested in it is an albatross hanging around your neck. A home under the main flight path of an airport is a non-starter.

So, you purchase a home with adequate bedrooms, bathrooms, garage, and location. Your location desires vary with your age and family situation. With children access to schools rates very high. Access to airports, hospitals, major roadways, shopping centers, work and school all have various priorities.

You have located a home that fits your budget and the location appears to be acceptable, resale should be excellent, the neighborhood appears well kept and there is no nothing that leaps out as to why you might not want to buy.

You need to know more before leaping. What is the economic forecast for the city, county, region? Is the biggest employer shutting down later in the year? Good luck on selling your home when you need to move. Is there a major freeway alteration taking place two blocks away?

Before you buy you will stop and visit your possible new neighbors, check to see if you are in a flood plain, see if the city has plans to re-pave the street assessing each home, or a new sewer is envisioned. All expenses you may have to shoulder. Your new neighbors may tell you that your house has been hit by lightning twice in the past two years. There may have been an unsolved murder in the house under consideration. Who knows what you may discover.

You will come by the neighborhood in the early morning, on Saturday evenings and other random times. You will do your due diligence to minimize surprises after you have signed the papers at closing.

A pre-release facility in your town may be an issue that you don’t care to deal with and it will scotch the deal. That is fine. You have the right to choose where to live and what issues you are willing to live with.

Just as the residents of the Post Falls Highlands made clear to the Post Falls Planning and Zoning Committee, they were there first, they had major amounts of investments in their upscale golf community and a 16-bed residential mental facility did not fit in there. The point being is that they moved there because it was a golf community and did not have much in the way of hospitals, government offices, commercial facilities, etc. For the city to allow it be built in their midst after their purchases was not righteous.

If a facility that was there first and then you built your golf community around it, you made an informed decision and you must live with the results. The sub-division next to the sewer facility on Seltice Way has to sniff some unpleasant odors a couple of times a year. It was made clear when that sub-division started up that they would have to accept it.

So here is the deal, for most of us, our homes are probably the most expensive purchase we will ever make. Much of our financial well-being is directly related to our home. Almost all of our security needs are found in our homes and therefore our homes are emotional hot spots. Smacking down a 110 bed pre-release facility right here, while it might have some upside benefits for the prisoners, it is difficult to see any upside benefits for homeowners. Yes DOC can assure us that the prisoners are low risk, but can DOC guarantee that the administrators down the road will ensure that remains the case.

As to the pre-release facility one has to ask why have one at all? We all know that most criminals have committed crimes for which they were never charged, never even caught and when they are, there is often plea bargaining to save the criminal justice system money and resources, and that means that many crimes are in essence forgiven and forgotten. Then to add insult to injury, a system is set up that is essentially an honor system for people who have demonstrated that honor is not high on their personal list of accomplishments.

I can see no special reason why a pre-release facility has to be up north. I had to live in cities like L.A., Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Seattle for 30 years making a living before I could relocate to North Idaho. We take this place somewhat for granted, but it is truly special and we need to guard it and watch over it with a keen eye.

I would like to nominate Arco, Idaho, for a pre-release facility. It is the county seat of Butte County down on the lava beds in just about central Idaho. It has a population of about 1,000 people. In 1955 it was the first city in America to have its lights come on due to Nuclear Power. They only came on for one hour. In 1961, the SL-1 Reactor blew up with the first and only deaths from domestic nuclear reactors. Today they have the Experimental Breeder Reactor #1 Museum and the Craters of the Moon Lava Beds.

In 2017 the median price of a home was $91,000 and monthly rents were about $580. What makes Arco so good is that a pre-release facility will bring in some good paying government jobs. The rent is pretty low so prisoner families moving there will be able to afford it. With only a thousand in population it will be easy to note if a pre-release prisoner is not behaving well. If one decides to walk away, he can go south and get radiated, but the security forces for the INL have that area wired and will swoop right down and nail them. Any other direction is lava beds and you can’t walk far on them.

With a small population they will not be able to fade into obscurity and go back to old criminal ways without being obvious. There is no reason for them to get to come to North Idaho until they have earned their way by demonstrating good citizenship in Arco.

Arco has needs and the state could provide funds to employ these pre-release people. First off, they could re-pipe the city water system. The water is a very dark brown. The streets are very wide and dust is everywhere. Streets need to be swept and windows washed.

When the prisoners demonstrate good work habits, the ability to follow the rules of the facility then they could graduate from Arco and move on to Pocatello for graduate level training. Furthermore, since the Department of Correction is so adamant about saddling our community with this facility, the governor should order the director and the Boise staff to move to Arco and set up shop right along with the pre-release facility. DOC has about 2,000 employees and if the senior staff in Boise were to move to Arco, it would do them good to see first-hand the results of their plans and Arco, which is such a wide spot in the road, literally, that it would benefit from this influx of criminals, their families, and the bureaucrats. There would then be high-level attention paid to the program and the population increase in Boise could be lowered a tad. There really is no compelling reason for them not to pack up and move to Arco.

So that’s the idea and I can see no downside.

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Bob Hunt is a Post Falls resident.