By Barbara Tetreault Mar 01, 2011 12:00 am
SHELBURNE - Speaking at the Androscoggin Valley Chamber of Commerce annual meeting, Warden Dr. Deborah Schult said the question is not "if" the federal prison in Berlin will open, but rather "when" it will open.
On the job two weeks, Schult explained the facility is ready to open except it lacks an operating budget. Because Congress has failed to pass a 2011 budget, the government is running on a continuing resolution that funds agencies at the 2010 level. Construction of the Berlin prison was just completed last fall so it had no 2010 operating budget. With Congress increasingly looking at passing another continuing resolution when the present one expires on March 4, Schult said officials are working behind the scene to get language included that provides money to activate the Berlin prison. If that does not happen, she said, the next option is when the 2011 budget is eventually passed.
Schult stressed the bureau needs the beds the Berlin prison will provide and there is no chance it will not open.
"It's not a matter of if we're going to activate but when we're going to activate," she told the crowd. "We're ready to go," she said.
The federal prison in Berlin cost $245 million to construct and when fully activated, will hold 1,700 inmates. The prison will employ 332 people with 60 percent new hirees. Right now, Schult there are 16 staff members on board, three are New Hampshire natives.
Schult described her background as a psychologist who enjoys finding out "what makes people tick". She started in the Bureau of Prisons in 1995 as a psychologist and has worked with all kinds of inmates including mentally ill, drug addicts, and sexual offenders. Schult ended up in Washington D.C. overseeing all the clinical treatment programs in the system before transferring into administration eight years ago. She served as associate warden at Fort Devons, Massachusetts, and then became warden at Ray Brook, N.Y. When she heard a new prison was being built in Berlin, she was interested in the opportunity to activate a new facility. She revealed she visited Berlin a year and a half ago to check out the community.
"I actually asked to come here," she said.
Schult said she is a native New Englander, born in Massachusetts and noted that part of her family owns a dairy farm in Vermont.
She and her husband have two children, a third grade student and a fifth grader.
Cutline - Dr. Deborah Schult, warden at the new federal prison, was the keynote speaker at Friday's Androscoggin Valley Chamber of Commerce annual meeting at the Town and Country Motor Inn in Shelburne Friday night.
