Prison Crowding Threatens Honor Program

An innovative program that seeks to reduce violence among maximum-security inmates is being severely tested at the state prison in Lancaster, where a population squeeze is forcing officials to house dangerous criminals with others who have vowed to remain peaceful.

Since 2000, Lancaster’s honor yard program has created a special housing area for prisoners who have promised to stay away from gangs, drugs and violence. Families, convicts and prison experts have praised the program for reducing violent incidents, and prison officials have considered taking the idea to other lockups around the state.

But last month, about 130 inmates who did not meet the criteria were transferred to honor yard housing, prison spokesman Lt. Ken Lewis said Monday. Some of them are responsible for a stabbing March 16 and a violent melee Friday involving six prisoners.

As a result of the fight, some honor inmates remained locked in their cells Monday while prison guards investigated the incident.

Lewis acknowledged that the transfer ran the risk of diluting the honors program.

“But our main goal is to house inmates, [and] we have to do what we have to do to house inmates. We’re overcrowded,” he said.

The honors yard now houses 850 inmates.

Lewis said that state corrections officials had told the prison to make more room for convicts with “sensitive needs,” such as gang informants or other potential targets. In the last few weeks, the number of these inmates has doubled to 2,000.

That change displaced inmates who do not qualify for either the sensitive needs or honors program. Some were shipped to different prisons, but others remained at Lancaster, where the only beds available for them were in the honor yard, Lewis said.

Kenneth E. Hartman, an honors program inmate, wrote a letter to Youth and Adult Corrections Secretary Roderick Q. Hickman after the March stabbing incident, saying he feared it was “the start of a spate of violence.”

The recent melee was quelled when officers fired block guns and sprayed mace at the fighting inmates.