i was home, almost went in, figured 250 other officers were enough..both wings of this unit were destroyed, from all sprinkler heads broke off, toilets, sinks, drywall, doors, windows, tv's, and anything else they could smash..
Future Lieber uprisings foreseen Ex-guard says contraband is widespread By Glenn Smith gsmith@postandcourier.com
Monday, February 6, 2012
13 Comment(s)
Solitary guards supervising hundreds of inmates. Prisoners armed
with homemade weapons and contraband cellphones. Inmates driven to rage
by extended lockdowns.
This is the world Scott Jones confronted daily as a correctional officer at Lieber state prison in Ridgeville.
Over a dozen years, Jones said, he watched as budget cuts ate away at
manpower and equipment, compromising safety in the maximum-security
prison. And he saw how decisions made by folks far away from this rural
outpost made life more difficult for those who live and work behind its
razor-wired fences.
Sensing a powder keg ready to explode, Jones quit his job last month,
determined to speak out about problems at the prison. Just a week
later, a riot broke out at Lieber as pipe-wielding inmates attacked
greatly outnumbered guards and took over a dorm for five hours.
Jones, a 40-year-old former sergeant, said he wasn't surprised by the
melee. In fact, he expects more trouble as long as the conditions at
Lieber persist and inmates remain locked down for 23 hours a day.
"It's like with an animal," he said, shaking his head. "If you keep it
caged up, it's going to get mean. And it's going to get violent."
Corrections Department officials said Jones was good at his job, and
they don't dispute many of his descriptions of life at Lieber. The
department is very concerned about the safety of its officers and
inmates, agency spokesman Clark Newsom said, but there is just no money
to hire more personnel and expand programs in the state's prisons.
"By its very nature, it's a tough job," he said. "Even if you have a
full force of officers, you still have the possibility of problems.
(Lieber) is a maximum-security prison, and you have some very tough
characters there."
'House of Pain'Jones, a Summerville resident who now runs his own pressure-washing
company, applied for a correctional job thinking it would be a good
steppingstone toward a career in law enforcement. He grew to like the
job and the people he worked with. He stayed on, earning promotions and
serving on the prison's equivalent of a SWAT team.
But things changed as budget cuts took their toll on the prison
system, which ran a $30 million deficit last year just to keep its
facilities operating. The prison system's 23,000 inmates now outnumber
their guards by a nearly 6-to-1 ratio.
Jones worked in the Ashley dorm, where the riot occurred. Officers
called the unit "The House of Pain," a violent wing full of murderers,
rapists, robbers and the like. People have died there, including
19-year-old James Belli of Summerville, who was shanked in the neck by a
fellow inmate in 2006.
Jones said that due to understaffing, it is not uncommon for officers
in this environment to find themselves working alone at night on a wing
full of violent offenders. These officers have to enter three-man cells
armed with nothing more than a radio, keys and pepper spray, he said.
"If I have to fight them, I'm only going to be able to do that for so
long," Jones said. "Sooner or later, they're going to get the advantage
on me."
On the night of the riot, prison officials said, two officers were
keeping watch over a dorm with 229 hard-core offenders inside when they
were beaten with a pipe and overpowered.
Jones said the steel pipe likely was a desk leg that had been broken
off and fashioned into a weapon, which has happened several times in the
past. He said he was involved in an incident several months back in
which an inmate used such a pipe to attack a team of officers who had
come to remove him from his cell.
The inmate used the pipe to break one officer's protective shield,
then clubbed a sergeant whose helmet fell off in the fracas, Jones said.
Breaching securityHomemade weapons are common inside the prison, as are illegal
cellphones. Inmates get friends or family on the outside to toss phones,
marijuana and tobacco over the prison fences in trash bags,
hollowed-out foam footballs or other projectiles. "We've even found
camouflage bolt cutters in the grass," he said.
The accomplices often are aided by the inmates themselves, who use
contraband phones to notify them when guards on perimeter patrols have
passed by, Jones said.
In the late 1990s, Lieber had four officers patrolling the perimeter
and a watchtower where guards could survey the landscape, Jones said.
Now there is just one person roving the perimeter.
Some 15 video cameras were installed to compensate for the reduced
personnel, but there is often just one person in the control room to
monitor the cameras while also answering phones, opening and shutting
doors, and handling other tasks, he said.
"Even if they're watching, the camera's not going to climb off the pole and catch somebody," he said.
Jones and prison officials agree that cellphones are a major menace
inside Lieber and other facilities, but the correctional system hasn't
found an effective way to weed them out. In 2010 alone, some 2,000
cellphones were seized from the state's prisons.
The Post and Courier last year discovered dozens of state and federal
inmates apparently using contraband phones to maintain Facebook and
Myspace pages.
No solution in sightAbout a half-dozen people identifying themselves as Lieber inmates
called The Post and Courier on contraband cellphones after the riot to
complain about conditions at the prison and to dispute official accounts
of what occurred.
One caller, who wouldn't give his name, described himself as a
convicted murderer serving a 22-year sentence. He said getting illegal
phones is easy as long as an inmate or a friend on the outside can come
up with $350 for the device.
"It's as easy as one-two-three," said the man, who carried on a half-hour conservation with a reporter without being noticed.
Jones said illegal phones are prized possessions and inmates will
viciously fight with anyone -- including correctional officers -- who
try to take them away.
Some officers on undermanned shifts won't even go into cells to
search for the phones for fear of being outnumbered and attacked, Jones
said. He said he knows of four officers who were injured in the last two
months in such encounters.
For more than two years, South Carolina has been seeking federal
permission to jam cellphone signals at state prisons, but the request
has stalled before the Federal Communications Commission, despite
support from 30 other states.
"It's something our folks keep bringing up, but we can't get it
approved," Newsom said. "The cellphone problem is epidemic, and it's not
just a problem for us. Every state is dealing with this right now."
FCC officials said last week that the request is still under review, with no timetable for a decision.
Meanwhile, inmates at Lieber warn that more trouble might be in the
offing as tensions simmer under extended lockdowns. Inmates in the
Ashley dorm said they have been locked down in crowded cells for weeks,
deprived of showers and recreation time and fed meal after meal of stale
bologna.
Prison officials lock down the units for every infraction. If two men fight, everyone suffers, they said.
Jones agreed, but he feels the most empathy for the people he used to
work with. Many have no choice but to keep working in an environment of
constant risk, he said. "It's sad, but they need these jobs to pay the
bills. They need the money, but they need to be safe too."