Inmates Use ‘Gassing’ to Strike Back at the System

In California’s high-tech prisons, remote control buttons and electronic doors keep contact between guards and inmates to a minimum. But three times a day, food trays in hand, correctional officers come face-to-face with inmates. Breakfast, lunch and dinner can be a dangerous time.

Earlier this year, in the Security Housing Unit at Corcoran State Prison, Officer Gary Gulack was reminded of those risks in a most vile way. As he reached into the food port to retrieve a dinner tray from a cell, an inmate shoved the tray out and threw a cup of urine mixed with feces into Gulack’s face.

The inmate blended in toilet paper as a kind of papier mache, so the brew would stick when it hit the officer’s skin. The 32-year-old Gulack said he was unprepared for the attack. Just the day before, he had brought the inmate some books from the prison library.

“I was wearing a face shield, but it still hit me in the side of the head, went down into my ear and under my vest and soaked clean through to my sweats underneath,” Gulack said. “He had 12 more cups filled with the same mixture lined in his cell.”

The practice--known as gassing--is on the rise throughout California’s 33-prison system with an incident or two occurring daily, according to state statistics. Over the last five years, the number of gassings has risen 40%--to 469 incidents in 1998--while the prison population has grown 16%. The state’s prison guard union says the practice reflects the depraved and predatory nature of California’s inmates.

But union officials and correctional staff also concede that the factors behind gassing are more complicated. Many repeat gassers are mentally ill convicts warehoused in prisons rather than state hospitals. Gassing may also be a measure of the isolation and sensory deprivations peculiar to California prisons, they say.

Throwing bodily fluids or spitting at corrections officers, guards say, has become a way to strike back at a system that provides fewer and fewer positive outlets such as vocational training and college courses and exercise with weights.

“We’ve got a sensory deprivation problem already and the screws are being turned all the time,” said Don Novey, president of the California Correctional Peace Officer’s Assn. “Now there’s talk about taking TV away from inmates. That’s a big mistake.”

In Gulack’s case, the inmate who gassed him has two communicable and deadly diseases, AIDS and hepatitis-C. Gulack said he will have to be tested for the next two years. So far, the tests have come up negative.

The toll can go on for years. Officer Aleardo Donati said his gassing in early 1998 affected his relationship with his newborn child and his wife.

“The inmate managed to throw his stuff under my face shield so it went into my mouth and up my nose. They flushed my nose with a saline solution but I couldn’t get the smell out for days,” said Donati, 32, a guard at Corcoran for the last six years.

“Our baby was born two days later and it was hard being around when it came time to change the diaper. My wife was very understanding, but she felt kind of uncomfortable being close to me.”

Donati also had to be tested for AIDS and the tests proved negative. He said he still feels snake bitten. “I got counseling, but I still think about it. You hear that it’s happened to your partner or some other officer and it all comes back.”