-Caveat Lector- Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com Private prison experiment faltering Guards, inmates allege violence, inadequate food at Newport units. By Michael Haddigan Arkansas Times Magazine November 17, 2000 NEWPORT - Arkansas officials hoped contracting the private Wackenhut Corrections Corp. to operate two side-by-side units of the Arkansas prison system would help reduce the mounting costs of the state's mounting prison population. The company promised to run the prisons cheaper and to provide better rehabilitation than the state could. But two years after Wackenhut, the world's largest for-profit prison operator, opened the separate men's and women's prisons at Newport, reports from state officials and from inside the walls suggest Arkansas's private prison experiment is faltering. In recent interviews with the Arkansas Times, current and former Wackenhut guards and employees spoke of alleged inmate mistreatment, corrupt officers, malfunctioning security devices and inadequate staff. Combined with observations by state officials and previously undisclosed inmate accounts of alleged abuse received by the Times, the employees' complaints raise questions about the private company's ability to run the prisons safely and efficiently. Some say the company is cutting corners to save money. "They are doing just enough to satisfy who they have to satisfy and no more," guard Joe Tagliaboschi said of Wackenhut during a recent interview. Tagliaboschi, a Wackenhut guard since 1999 who has worked at both Newport prisons, is one of a half-dozen current and former employees interviewed about conditions at the two prisons housing a total of about 1,200 men and women. Tagliaboschi was the only staffer who agreed to speak on the record about life inside the Wackenhut prisons. Others, saying they feared retaliation, spoke only on condition of anonymity. Most of those interviewed for this article said conditions had improved in recent months at both Wackenhut facilities. But guards, inmates and state officials said the first two years of private prison management in Arkansas had been hard time for all concerned. "I still have a hard time believing all the things that went on," said one former employee. The medium-security Scott Grimes Correctional Facility houses young males between the ages of 16 and 24. The nearly identical Ronald McPherson Correctional Facility next door is currently the state's only prison for women. The squat, utilitarian complexes surrounded by fences and razor wire stand alone on 300 acres of rich northeastern Arkansas farmland about 90 miles from Little Rock. Tagliaboschi and others interviewed separately said that gross understaffing, security breaches, malfunctioning equipment, high turnover and corruption by some correctional officers had endangered guards and inmates. Morale among guards is at rock bottom, they said. "Officers are all but coming to blows right in front of the inmates," one former guard said. And inmates complain that inadequate diets, unsanitary conditions and unprovoked beatings take their punishment far beyond that ordered by the courts that convicted them. "Stuff like this only makes us want to get out and get even," a male inmate wrote in a letter received by the Arkansas Times. The newspaper in September received a score of inmate letters, dated the last week of July, complaining of beatings at the hands of guards assigned temporarily to Newport from a Wackenhut prison in Louisiana. Wackenhut officials, who deny any officer used excessive force, confirmed that personnel from the company's Allen Unit rotated in and out of Newport on temporary assignment last summer to relieve staff shortages. Tagliaboschi and other guards said the beatings were common knowledge throughout the men's prison. "They were vicious," he said of the Louisiana guards. "They just didn't treat the inmates like human beings." State Correction Department director Larry Norris and state prison board chairman Mary Parker said they had received no reports of inmate abuse by the Louisiana guards. Norris said he knew that Wackenhut brought guards in from Louisiana. "But as far as any officers getting out of hand, I don't know anything about that." Warden John Maples, who oversees both Wackenhut units at Newport, said management had received no reports of excessive force by the Louisiana officers. Wackenhut senior vice president John Hurley in a recent interview acknowledged staff, sanitation and equipment problems and a shortage of work programs, particularly at the men's unit. "But that is not to say we have anything to be ashamed about. We are very proud of our people, and we are very proud of what we do," he said. "At the same time we recognize that we have some issues to work on, and we are working on those issues." Hurley said Wackenhut had sent in new wardens, transferred troublemaking inmates to maximum-security state prisons and intensified corporate scrutiny of the Arkansas units. Maples, Warden Rita Maxwell of the McPherson Unit and Warden Larry January of the Grimes Unit said they were not aware of any morale problems among the guards. Norris and other officials have complained for months about conditions at the Newport prisons. Department officials and prison board members at a recent meeting cited numerous deficiencies at Grimes and McPherson, including dirty inmate housing and high staff turnover. Documents obtained by the Arkansas Times through the Freedom of Information Act show that the state gave Florida-based Wackenhut more than just an earful. The Correction Department in July and September fined Wackenhut a total of $17,500 for contract violations. The company failed to staff critical security posts at the two units and failed to have a physician in the prisons for the 64 hours a week required under the contract. The company is eager to retain the Arkansas contracts, Hurley said. But he admitted that the Newport prisons were money-losers for Wackenhut. "They are poor financial performers, yes," he said. The corporation has several times asked the state for more money, Hurley said. But Arkansas officials have refused. "A deal is a deal," Norris said. Hurley said medical costs in the women's prison turned out to be many times higher than the company initially thought. And a tight labor market has made it tough to attract people willing to work as guards, so Wackenhut has had to pay higher than anticipated salaries. An entry-level Wackenhut correctional officer makes about $16,000. The state's base pay for similar positions is about $19,000, Norris said. The corporation is asking the state to consider ways of helping reduce Wackenhut's labor and medical costs. Asked if Wackenhut was cutting corners to offset costs, Hurley said, "Absolutely not." Hurley spoke as he and other Wackenhut officials took a reporter on a nearly six-hour, all-access tour of both prison units. They did not permit photographs or interviews with inmates during the tour. But they allowed an unprecedented inspection of inmate living quarters, punitive segregation cells, classrooms, laundries, medical units and even the women's Special Programs Unit where mentally ill women are housed. Both units generally appeared clean. Electrically controlled gates and door locks worked properly. The smell of fresh paint was almost everywhere, and laborers busily made repairs in both units. Showers in both units are being refurbished. Some inmates must go without showers for several days while repairs are being made, Wackenhut officials said. Frowning women inmates who spotted a reporter on the tour silently indicated their displeasure by miming a person showering and giving a "thumbs- down" sign. Hurley said inmates, especially aggressive young male offenders, were rough on prison facilities, and maintenance and cleanliness were tough to maintain. Prison reports obtained by the Times are filled with notes about inmates destroying fixtures to make weapons, purposely clogging toilets and trying to rig door locks. Hurley insisted Wackenhut was committed to improving the Newport units. However, current and former employees and inmates claimed Wackenhut had a habit of sprucing up for visitors and allowing conditions to worsen again when they leave. "It is definitely a dog and pony show," said a former guard who worked at both the men's and women's prisons. The Arkansas experiment Wackenhut's Arkansas troubles come after a series of scandals in other states in recent years. In May 1999, a federal Justice Department investigation found evidence of beatings and inadequate food, clothing and medical care and forced Wackenhut to quit the juvenile prison it ran for the state in Jena, La. In August 1999, a guard and an inmate died in a three-hour riot involving hundreds of inmates at a Wackenhut prison in New Mexico. In Texas, Wackenhut lost a $12 million contract to operate an Austin- area jail when dozens of former guards were indicted for having sex with inmates. The company has 55 contracts to run correctional facilities in 14 states and in Puerto Rico, England, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Wackenhut is responsible for up to 39,000 inmates worldwide. In the United States alone, its total inmate population is greater than that of many individual states. Arkansas's private prison experiment began in 1995 when the state legislature appropriated $20.5 million to the Correction Department to hire a private company to build and operate two new prisons. Backed by then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker with the support of director Larry Norris, the private prison plan had no opposition in the legislature. Allowing a private company to run the two 600-bed facilities would save the state tens of millions of dollars over 20 years, backers said. In January 1996, the state signed a contract with Wackenhut to build the two units. After construction of the two Newport prisons, in January 1998 inmates from the former women's unit at Tucker moved to McPherson. Young male inmates, mostly from the crowded gang-ridden Varner Unit, moved into the Grimes Unit. The transfers helped at least temporarily to relieve the backlog of state inmates in county jails awaiting beds in the state prison system. In the houses The almost identical Newport units are among the state's newest facilities. Built by Wackenhut and owned by the state, the units were designed with security and cost-effectiveness in mind, officials said. Guards in a Central Control room in each prison watch over an electronic control board controlling gates and doors and monitor the movements of inmates and guards by closed-circuit television. Beyond the Central Control gate is a main hallway leading to the unit's two "houses," to the right and left of the main hallway. Another corridor, which intersects with the main hallway forming a "T," connects the two houses. Each of the circular houses consists of seven pods. Each pod accommodates about 50 inmates. Some pods have cells where inmates live two to a room. Certain pods are designated lock-down pods where troublesome inmates spend much of their time in cells. Others live in open-bay pods similar to military barracks. A "Housing Control" officer sits at a console above the pod and from there can open and close cell doors and gates. Both the McPherson and Grimes units also have classrooms and staff offices. The two units have experienced numerous equipment breakdowns. A Wackenhut operational review provided to the state Correction Department shows that nine months after the prisons opened, the company still had no preventive maintenance program and no way to track maintenance histories of the equipment. Two years of constant use have taken their toll. For example, Grimes Unit incident logs show that on Dec. 21, 1999, the electronic control board that operates security gates and doors was "not working." Staff members broke into a glass case for keys to manually open doors in the unit. The board went down again on Feb. 20, 2000, and had other problems on June 29 and Aug. 22, the logs showed. The Central Control cameras went out four days later. The board crashed yet again on Sept. 3. The logs did not say how long the security devices were down or how long it took to fix them. "When Central is down, you can't get in and you can't get out," a correctional officer said. "The people in Central can't even get out." Chronic turnover and staff shortages sometimes make work in the prisons a risky business, correctional officers say. Norris said equipment breakdowns were a problem in any prison, and none of the Wackenhut equipment breakdowns was serious enough to warrant fining the company. Security staffing is another matter. The damages assessed against Wackenhut involved staffing levels between Aug. 21 and Sept. 5. But guards said inadequate staff was a constant problem. The state's contract with Wackenhut requires that at a minimum 18 critical security posts be staffed at the men's prison during the day and 16 at night. But guards said they'd run the men's prison with much fewer officers. "On the men's side, I know for a fact that they have run shifts with 10 or 12 people at night," said a former officer. Tagliaboschi said he'd worked nights when only nine guards supervised the 600 Grimes inmates. In the women's prison, the contract requires Wackenhut to staff 19 critical posts during the day and 18 at night. A guard from the women's prison said the night shift had handled their 600 prisoners with only 10 officers. When too few correctional officers show up for a shift, guards said, officers from the previous shift are locked in the prison and ordered to stay on. Some go home anyway. "They sneak out," one guard said. Two guards said they suffered injuries from fights with inmates that could have been prevented if more officers had been on duty. And several recalled the time a guard manning a Housing Control post on the men's side walked off the job in the middle of a shift, leaving officers trapped in pods with inmates. One of the guards was able to contact supervisors by radio. "He can't get out of the pod, and he's trying to be cool," a former guard said of a trapped officer. "He's trying to tell them in a nice way, you know, 'Get me out of here!'" Contraband Incident logs show that, like most prisons, the Wackenhut units are filled with drugs and weapons. Reports say officers have found shanks - crude knives made from commonplace metal and plastic objects- throughout both facilities. And officials regularly confiscate Free World cash, marijuana, alcohol and other drugs inside the units. Drug tests reveal that inmates take methamphetamine and cocaine too. Many suspect inmate visitors and Wackenhut employees are the main suppliers. All of those interviewed said the Correction Department's ban on tobacco use sparked a brisk trade in contraband cigarettes - often with guards as suppliers. In the McPherson Unit, they said, cigarettes sell for up to $1,000a carton. "A can of Top tobacco can go for $1,800," a Newport correctional officer said. (Prices are higher on the women's side because the women have more money. One former guard said hundreds of women received regular payments from "pen pals," Free World men who maintain postal romances with women inmates.) And some corrupt male officers allegedly use contraband to convince women inmates to have sex with them. "I've had so many young pretty ladies come to me saying officers are pressuring them for sex in exchange for cigarettes," a former employee said. Last month, former McPherson guard Marcus King, 26, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault after he admitted he had sex with a female inmate under his supervision during a medical visit to a local hospital. Several guards also complained that the Grimes inmates weren't getting enough to eat. "I know they're inmates, but these boys are human beings," said a former correctional officer. "You don't put them in jail to starve them. I don't care who you are, I'm not going to let anyone go hungry." Meals are prepared in a kitchen in the women's unit and trucked to the men's side where other inmates dish it out on trays that are distributed throughout the men's prison. The room where the food is dished out is often dirty, guards said, and food trays are often still crusted with food from the previous meal, guards and inmates said. "It is so unsanitary it is pitiful," Tagliaboschi said. "I don't understand why the health department hasn't come down and red-tagged them. No inmates have ever escaped from either Wackenhut prison. But incident reports show that authorities in recent months have several times discovered civilian clothing and guard uniforms apparently hidden by inmates. Tagliaboschi and others said that only recently had authorities made sure inmates wereproperly clothed. "There were inmates walking around that looked like ragpickers," Tagliaboschi said. "Nobody ever took the time to see that these guys got their full issue." Prison board chairman Mary Parker said she planned to look into problems disclosed by guards and inmates. Tagliaboschi, a fit, square-jawed ex-Marine, said he realized he risked his job by talking publicly about problems at the two Wackenhut units. "I just hope some good comes out of this," he said. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" 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