ST. CROIX - V.I. Attorney General Kerry Drue acknowledged Thursday that conditions at Golden Grove Adult Correctional Facility are a "very large problem," but she said inadequate funding and a shortage of qualified personnel are driving the dire situation.

Citing violent, dangerous and unsanitary conditions, the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed a motion asking District Court to find the Virgin Islands in contempt of an 18-year-old consent decree requiring it to clean up the territory's main prison.

The motion, filed by the Civil Rights Division Special Litigation Section, asks the court to assign an independent agent - known as a "special master" - to fix problems that it says the Virgin Islands has ignored for nearly two decades at Golden Grove Adult Correctional Facility.

Drue said the contempt motion came on the heels of three weeks of negotiations between the territory and the Justice Department. Those talks ended abruptly Monday over the issue of the special master.

Drue said the Justice Department wanted the V.I. government to foot the bill for the special master and any consultants that person may need to hire to fully evaluate the conditions at Golden Grove. She said that the Justice Department could not provide a figure for the cost and that she could not authorize any spending without first knowing how much it would cost the territory and where the funding would come from.

"This came as a surprise," Drue said of the motion. "For the past three weeks we've been meeting and trying to resolve this. We went over a number of issues and a compliance plan that our office had designed. We had requested additional time to implement the plans, but the Justice Department said they've been waiting 19 years and had run out of patience. They wanted us to agree to pay all the costs associated with them and the special master. We asked for a sum, and they could not give us a figure. I cannot be in a position to write a blank check."

Drue said she was upset that no one at the Justice Department notified her of the filing. She said her office has been trying to contact federal lawyers since Monday, but the calls were not returned until Thursday.

"After we had invested so much time, you would think they would have extended us some professional courtesy and let us know," she said.

Drue, confirmed by the Senate as attorney general in September, said she will work "to alleviate the problems" at Golden Grove "without circumventing the law which I have taken an oath to uphold."

Federal Justice Department officials did not return phone calls or requests for information Thursday.

In a 68-page memorandum in support of the motion filed Tuesday, federal inspectors detailed dozens of incidents and violations documented during two visits to the prison in September 2004.

Inspectors found "overwhelming evidence" that the Virgin Islands was not meeting the conditions of the 1986 consent decree and subsequent compliance plan signed in 1990. They found that inmate-on-inmate and staff-on-inmate violence was unnecessarily high, inmates are not receiving adequate medical or mental health care, inmates are faced with serious fire hazards, and deficient health and sanitation conditions are placing inmates at an "unreasonable risk of disease."

Drue did not argue with the findings in the report and said her office was using that report to draft its compliance plan.

"It's a very large problem," she said. "Part of our problem is financial, and another is being able to find and hire qualified personnel. We've had great difficulty in finding qualified applicants on St. Croix. We're trying to coordinate with the department of personnel. But even as we're doing the interviewing process we have people retiring and resigning. It's very hard to keep the numbers up, much less to increase them."

Drue said the V.I. Justice Department and the Corrections Bureau are working to make repairs to the physical infrastructure of the prison and improve policies and procedures. She said the kitchen has been remodeled and an exterminator has been contracted to deal with insect infestations.

The federal report cited multiple health hazards at the prison, including inadequate equipment, improperly stored food, insect infestations and potential backflow of contaminated water. Electrical and fire hazards also exist at the facility.

"We're looking into that," Drue said of the fire hazards and what federal investigators said was an inoperable fire alarm system. "I've spoken to the director, and it's part of the plan."

The federal inspectors found that infrequent searches had led to a culture of contraband at the prison and documented one case in which prisoners were able to obtain 15 foot-long knives that were shipped into the prison undetected from a local retailer.

Search procedures are being upgraded at Golden Grove, she said, although she acknowledged that without increased manpower, regular shakedowns of all the housing units would be difficult.

The failure to provide adequate medical and mental health care also was cited by federal inspectors. Drue said the Corrections Bureau is expanding its medical staff.

"We've hired a head nurse," she said, "and we are interviewing for other nurse positions."

Drue said mentally ill inmates soon will be moved to a new facility under construction in Anna's Hope. That facility was scheduled to open this summer, but the opening has been repeatedly delayed. The most recent delay related to the installation of an air-conditioning system, but Drue said the problem is nearly remedied and the facility will open soon.

Drue acknowledged that to bring Golden Grove into full compliance would require significant funding, but she said her office has not yet been able to "assess the full cost." She said she was working on a supplemental budget request to be presented to the Legislature.

She said she balked at the idea of a special master, partially because it would divert funds away from actual repairs to the prison. She said the Corrections Bureau can base improvements on the deficiencies outlined in the federal inspection report and does not need a special master to coordinate additional, costly evaluations.

"It's better to use what limited funds we can get into the cost of repair," she said.

- Contact Patrick Joy at 774-8772 ext. 458 or e-mail pjoy@dailynews.vi.