Dangers to Prison Guards Rise as Inmate Conditions Worsen

In the aftermath of last month’s prison riot in Ohio and other prison disturbances, new concern is arising over a little-noticed group of U.S. workers--the correctional officers and other staff members who guard some of society’s most violent outcasts.

With overcrowded prison conditions common and growing worse--perhaps the chief cause of escalating tensions--authorities say assaults by inmates against prison employees have risen to alarming proportions.

In 1991, the last year for which complete figures are available, inmates committed more than 9,900 assaults against staff members--more than the 8,564 assaults inmates committed against each other.

Gerald W. McEntee, president of a union representing more than 40,000 state correctional employees, believes too little attention has been paid to the dangers faced by prison officers.

“In the rush to bring public light to the condition of inmates and invest them with rights, a grave injustice has been done the thousands of men and women who, every day of their working lives, are often as much a prisoner as those who have been incarcerated,” says McEntee, who heads the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

BACKGROUND: The rioting at Ohio’s maximum-security prison at Lucasville, which began Easter Sunday and continued for 10 days, resulted in the death of a guard hanged by inmates. Five other guards held hostage eventually were released, and nine inmates were killed in the disturbance.

More recently, South Dakota prisoners assaulted an officer at the outset of a short-lived riot, and both legs of a guard at Virginia’s Greenville Correctional Facility were broken by inmates.

A new study issued by McEntee’s union has found that despite construction of additional state prisons and the hiring of more staff, “the capacity of state corrections systems simply has not kept pace with the number of prisoners being incarcerated.”

Between 1987 and 1991, according to the study, an average of nearly 26,000 correctional officers were hired each year by state systems. Even so, overcrowding has gradually worsened in the past five years as state prison populations have exceeded 700,000 inmates--an increase of nearly 200,000 since 1988.

It found state prison systems operating at an average of 116% of capacity, and California prisons at 172% of capacity at the start of last year.

In addition, the ratio of inmates to officers has risen steadily. In 1989, the study said, the inmate-to-corrections-officer ratio was 4.7 to 1. But by the start of last year it had crept up to 5.2 prisoners to every officer.

In Ohio, the ratio was as high as 8 to 1. The 1992 figure for California, the study said, was 7 to 1.

Federal prisons were not included in the study because the union does not represent any guards there. But the problem of violence toward guards and other staff members in federal prisons is not as severe because conditions generally are better, and many federal inmates are white-collar criminals who were not involved in violent crimes.

ISSUES: Jan Elvin of the ACLU’s National Prison Project said that overcrowding--especially in state correctional facilities--is a “pervasive evil” that makes life hazardous for guards as well as inmates.

“It increases the tensions for everyone,” she said. “But at least correctional officers can walk out of that environment at the end of their shift.”

Elvin said a principal cause of overcrowding has been sentencing guidelines in many states that specify long prison terms for drug crimes--even in the case of first-time offenders.

“We would like the public to see prisons as a last resort, not as a first resort,” she said.

McEntee, in a letter earlier this month, commended Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for her recent pledge to examine the impact that mandatory minimum prison sentences have had on the explosion of the federal prison population over the past decade. He said the Justice Department also should try to assist state correctional systems “to diminish the peril for the men and women who wear the badge and work behind prison walls.”