A regular Source feature, Undercurrents slips below the surface of Virgin Islands daily routines and assumptions to explore in greater depth the beauty, the mystery, the murky and the disregarded familiar. It is our bid to get to know the community more deeply.
Few people outside the system know it, but the Golden Grove Correctional Facility has a new warden. No formal announcement has been made yet, but after serving more than once in an acting capacity, Basil Richards took over the position in his own right Sept. 14, replacing Tracey Brown.
As warden, Richards has responsibility for approximately 300 inmates, most of them serving long-term sentences, as well as for corrections officers and other staff. The facility handles prisoners at all security levels, from minimum to maximum.
A St. Croix native, Richards graduated from Central High School in 1985 and left soon afterwards for the mainland where he began a career of more than 20 years in corrections in California.
Starting in 1989, according to his impressive résumé, he worked as a correctional officer for 10 years, most of that at the Calipatria State Prison in California, where he also made a steady climb up the institutional ladder through the Investigative Services, eventually becoming the deputy inspector general for Corrections in California.
The very long list of educational and training courses included on the résumé suggests a man of ambition and drive. Most of them are obviously related to law enforcement, things such as drug abuse recognition in prison; field evidence technician; ballistic shield operator; Ethics/Code of Silence marks and scores more. But there is also Effective Business Writing, Grammar Refresher Certificate, and a handful more of the same ilk. Richards earned his Bachelor of Science Administration of Justice in 2004 from National University in San Diego and a Masters in management from Phoenix University in 2006.
He returned to the Virgin Islands in February 2011, as chief inspector for prisons in the territory.
“I don’t know how he got my number,” Richards said, but Bureau of Corrections Director Julius Wilson recruited him to investigate complaints against staff.
“There were significant problems here,” Richards said, which included “corruption” and officers “not complying with the rules.”
In 2011, he said he investigated 45 cases involving disciplinary action against officers for misconduct and about half the cases were sustained. In California, he had a year to complete an investigation, but the union contract for V.I. officers stipulates that the investigation must be completed in 55 working days.
“It was kind of challenging,” he said. But “I got a handle on it.”
As warden, Richards has the opportunity to address some of the issues he reviewed as chief investigator. The most common, he said, is officers’ use of force. Often the problem is not the action itself, he said, but the officer’s failure to document it properly. Even officers who are not involved in an incident but who witness it or otherwise deal with the situation are required to submit a report.
“The report-writing is very poor,” he said. “I think they don’t know how. They never were taught how. That’s on us, on the administration.”
An approach he’s taking is to improve the administration’s performance in an effort to improve staff performance. He created new report forms and is training officers how to complete them. He put together a manual to include such things as the dress code for officers and the rule that they may not leave the property while on duty. All employees, including civilians, get a copy and must sign that they have received the manual.
“I’m not reinventing the wheel,” he said, just putting existing policies into writing and enforcing them.
He’s also providing opportunities for various types of in-house training to improve performance and raise standards.
“We lose cases on poor evidence collection,” he said. So currently three officers are taking a course to improve that skill, he said.
Twice a week, Richards offers help to officers preparing to take the supervisor’s test in hopes of obtaining promotions. “There are some interested people,” he said; recently nine officers showed up for the class.
One thing Richards said he can’t do much about is the salary scale. Entry-level pay for a corrections officer is $24,000. After two years, it increases to $27,000. On paper, the entry level amount was raised more than a year ago, but the increase was small and has not been implemented because of budget constraints.
“Funding is the biggest challenge I have,” Richards said. It makes it difficult to retain competent officers and it has caused cutbacks in some programs for inmates.
Golden Grove provides jobs and skills training in a number of areas, including animal husbandry, computer literacy, upholstering and carpentry. However, Richards said, “We need more skilled programs, such as mechanics. We lost that (course) because we just didn’t have certified mechanics to teach it.”
Another serious challenge facing him is the gang culture that permeates the prison.
“It’s a little different than what I’m used to” as far as the way gangs are formed, he said. “Over here it’s more geographic, by where you live.” But the resistance to cooperating with or even living near a rival, and the potential for excessive violence is familiar from his work in California.
“It creates a huge problem for us in terms of housing people,” he said.
For help, he turned to “lifers” and long-time inmates at Golden Grove who know how to get along in prison. An inmate-to-inmate mentoring program addresses such problems as anger management and bullying. There is also a Prisoner Advisory Council headed by inmates serving long sentences.
“I’ve met with them three times now. Whatever I need to get out to the (prison) population, these guys do it.” That includes everything from quelling a spate of violence to helping to organize a monthly competition to see which of four units could have the cleanest building.
“They had people clean that never cleaned before,” Richards said. Inmates in the winning unit were rewarded with pizza. “It was such a huge incentive.”
Small successes help offset the big challenges.
“Some of the staff is doing a bit of push-back because ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Richards said, referring to his coming in from California. But that doesn’t seem to be the overriding reaction. Overall, he described an atmosphere of cooperation.
“This has got to be a concerted effort on all parts,” he said. “You empower … You lead by example … I’ve told them, ‘I need ideas,’ and, believe me, I get them.”
