Prison violence rises as budgets slashed
Saving money may come at a deadly cost
Eight years ago, lawmakers in South Carolina embarked on a bold plan to reform the state’s criminal justice system.
A 2010 criminal justice reform package, aimed at cutting the number of people sent to South Carolina prisons for low-level offenses, led to a 14% drop in inmates by 2016.
That allowed the state to close three maximum-security prisons and slash millions of dollars in annual prison spending from its budget.
South Carolina’s prison system now ranks among the country’s cheapest for taxpayers — but it also has become one of the deadliest for inmates. The prison system is under scrutiny after seven inmates were stabbed and slashed to death April 15 in the nation’s deadliest prison riot in a quarter-century.
While policymakers in many states have been lauded for similar efforts to reduce the prison population and spending, South Carolina’s experience may serve as a cautionary tale of the problems that can come with rapid spending cuts.
South Carolina’s cost cutting went beyond just imprisoning fewer people. Officials also reduced mental health and other programs aimed at rehabilitation and eliminated amenities and activities that can keep prisoners busy. In some prisons, it also has meant more mixing of violent and non-violent inmates and fewer guards.
The same kinds of cuts have been happening across the nation from New Jersey to Nevada. After decades of constant growth, the nation’s prison population peaked in 2009 before decreasing 7% from 2009 to 2016.
The riot at Lee Correctional Institution, a 1,785-bed prison in rural South
Carolina, is part of an increase in violence in prisons nationwide that has killed and injured inmates and guards alike and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in settlements.
Across the country, states slashed prison spending by more than $200 million from 2010 to 2015. Meanwhile, violence appears to be on the rise, according to a USA TODAY review of public records, lawsuits, academic studies and news reports.
Slayings reported inside prisons almost doubled over a decade, from about four homicides per 100,000 to about seven per 100,000 inmates in 2014, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
While the federal government doesn’t maintain data on prison riots, state records and news media accounts show there were at least nine prison riots nationwide in 2017 — matching levels last seen in the 1980s.
Though efforts to reduce South Carolina’s prison population stemmed from good motives, the push to defund prisons probably is contributing to the surge in violence, said Hannah Riley of the Southern Center for Human Rights.
“If not done really carefully, then this ends up being the result of it, which is really tragic,” she said.
‘Third world’ conditions
State officials attributed the sevenhour riot at Lee Correctional to gangs, but others blamed the outbreak of violence on living conditions.
“I believe that conditions not just at Lee but all across our state are deplorable, are third-world, and don’t reflect the kinds of standards that we have an obligation to uphold in this state,” South Carolina state Rep. James Smith said.
All seven inmates killed in the riot bled to death after being stabbed, slashed and beaten, according to Lee County Coroner Larry Logan. Cellphone images show bloodied bodies stacked in the prison yard.
In Delaware in February 2017, one corrections sergeant was killed in a riot at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. State investigators ultimately blamed the rioting on the prison being “critically understaffed.” The state paid $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of the corrections officer.
In Oklahoma in July, two corrections officers were taken hostage in a melee involving about 400 prisoners at Great Plains Correctional Facility.
“There is no simple fix,” said Bert Useem, a professor at Purdue University who has studied prison riots. “Crucial is strong, effective administration. This means more than military discipline. It also requires provision of programming, cell space that’s adequate and amenities to a reasonable degree.”
Prisoners wanted to die
In South Carolina, last year’s violence included an incident in which two prisoners at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia said they strangled four fellow prisoners to death. They lived in a block where their cells were left unlocked because they were considered trustworthy. One told a reporter they killed because they wanted to be executed, saying they could no longer bear the conditions of prison life.
Prison crowding gets a lot of attention but is generally less a factor than staffing, said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based criminal justice reform advocacy group.
“Most of the research on the issue shows that it’s the management of the prison that’s really critical,” he said.
Shaundra Scott, executive director of the ACLU of South Carolina, said understaffing in the state’s prisons is exacerbated by poor mental health care and failure to separate non-violent offenders from violent inmates.
“I’m not saying that they need to have a five-star hotel, but they’re still human beings at the end of the day,” Scott said. “You’re in there to be in prison to pay your debt to society, and you shouldn’t have to worry if you’re going to die while you’re in there.”
Experts say maintaining staffing levels is key to preventing riots and disturbances — a persistent problem in South Carolina, where one in five of the state’s prison guard jobs are vacant.
“The guard-to-prisoner ratio has gotten to a really unsustainable point,” the Southern Center for Human Rights’ Riley said. “The jobs that the guards do are incredibly hard. They’re paid very poorly. There’s just not enough of them.”
In the federal prison system, the ratio is about one corrections officer for every
10 inmates. The South Carolina riot occurred with 44 guards on staff for
1,583 inmates — one guard for every 35 or so prisoners.
According to the Department of Corrections, the starting salary for a correctional officer at maximum security prisons is $34,596. The agency’s chief told reporters in January that about one-fourth of those jobs were unfilled.
“You need to have adequate numbers of well-trained, high-quality staff who are properly deployed,” said Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “And that’s just a given in any prison system if you want to operate it safely.”
Contributing: Tim Smith, Eric Connor, and Paul Hyde of The Greenville (S.C.) News; Nikie Mayo and Kirk Brown of the Anderson (S.C.) Independent Mail.