Wash. Prison System Prepares For Convicted Killer Isaiah Kalebu

Published 5:00 pm Monday, August 22, 2011

SHELTON, Wash. The recent murder trial in Seattle of Isaiah Kalebu made headlines. There was, of course, the brutality of his crime: the rape and butcher knife attack of two women in their home that left one of them dead.

But the trial also attracted attention because of Kalebu’s volatile outbursts in court and suicide attempts. Now he’s headed to prison for life.

In Washington, virtually all new prison inmates start their sentences at the sprawling, razor-wired Washington Corrections Center. Most inmates arrive on what’s called the “chain bus.”

But not someone like Isaiah Kalebu. Prison officials here have seen the news reports like this one on KING 5.

“He’s now forced to wear what’s called a suicide smock and is shackled to a chair.”

And they’ve seen Kalebu’s record from the King County jail. A hundred page packet that details more than seventy infractions during the two years he was locked up there.

“There are things like exposing himself in front of female staff, refusing direct orders, threatening to kill correctional officers,” says Patrick Gosney. He is what you might call an inmate profiler.

In Kalebu’s case, he says, “we have violent behaviors, we have mental health issues.”

Gosney says he sees maybe four cases a year like this: new inmates that present Kalebu’s level of danger and complexity.

Just to get him here prison officials will send a special van with a chase car behind. The van has tinted windows and two steel cages inside. As part of my tour, a corrections lieutenant locks me inside.

Basically it is a non-descript van, but on the inside it’s all caged-up so you’d see it driving down the road you wouldn’t that somebody was in here who’s a high-risk inmate.

Once Kalebu arrives at the Washington Corrections Center he will most likely go here. This is the Intensive Management Unit or IMU. That’s prison speak for solitary confinement.

It’s where all inmates convicted of aggravated murder – as Kalebu was – start their prison term, unless they’re headed to death row.

Edward Woods runs the IMU here. He shows me an 8′ x 12′ cinderblock cell. Inmates here are locked down 23 hours a day. When they are let out they’re always cuffed and escorted by two officers. Inmates who act up are subject to restraint chairs, spit masks and even electric shock. A few inmates will spend their entire 20-plus year sentence in IMU. But Woods says that’s rare.

More common, he says, an out of control county jail inmate like Kalebu shows up here and it’s as if a light switch is flipped.

“It’s almost like a bi-polar person who’s been manic the entire time that they’re in the jail and when they get to the prison it’s like everything is good,” Woods says. “It’s hard to describe but I’ve seen it quite a bit.”

Who knows why: the finality of a long sentence, the relative calm of prison over jail. Either way stability is certainly what Michael Schwartz hopes for Kalebu. He led the defense team.

“I’m not only hopeful but I’m confident that based on my knowledge of the Department of Corrections he will get significantly more help while he’s there.”

If an inmate like Kalebu arrives at Shelton and his mental health is so degraded he poses an immediate risk to himself, there’s another option: the mental health wing.

The goal – while not always accomplished is to stabilize a mentally ill inmate enough so that he can eventually move into the general prison population.

Copyright 2011 Northwest News Network

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