DOC Offers Look Inside Moose Lake Correctional Facility

More than 1,000 offenders are housed in the state prison

MOOSE LAKE, Minn. – The Minnesota State Correctional Facility in Moose Lake opened its doors, giving a look inside the walls of the medium-security prison.

More than a thousand offenders– the majority of whom are convicted for sex offenses– are housed in the Moose Lake Correctional Facility. We were given a rare tour through the building to see first-hand what it’s like inside the prison walls.

Passing through long hallways, into dorms, and even the chow hall, the tour showed how offenders spend their time day after day.

“Ninety-five percent of the people that are in this facility are going to potentially become our neighbors,” said Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Paul Schnell.

Staff at the Moose Lake facility are dedicated to making prisoners ready to reenter the community.

“The investment that our facility has and the employees are having in the operation and the commitment to the offenders is I believe second to none,” said Warden Nate Knutson.

Offenders are trained in education programs like carpentry. They develop skills and receive pay working in places like the garment shop.

“We want them back with their families in the communities progressing and better than they came in,” said Knutson.

The DOC has about eighty statewide openings for corrections officers. They’re hoping with an increase in funding proposed for the next state budget, they can fill those vacancies and even add one-hundred-twenty more positions.

“If you have a shortage in areas of security then you can’t do programming in them,” said Knutson. “We have to find the base level of security before we open up other areas.”

With more staff, they say a more personal approach can be taken in preparing inmates for civilian life.

“We rely heavily on communicating with the offender population and gauging them and challenging them and pushing them into areas of change because it’s not easy, right,” said Knutson.

The DOC Commissioner is now touring each correctional facility in the state. He says one of his goals is reducing the total prison population so more help can be given to offenders who really need it.

“How is it that we keep young people who are going down the wrong path from entering the criminal justice system in a substantial way because we know that when that happens, the likelihood of being further drawn into the system is high,” said Schnell.

More than three hundred staff members work in the Moose Lake facility.

While they say there are about one or two assaults per week between inmates, the warden tells us there have only been two assaults on staff members in his nineteen years there.