Cellblock videos add to brutal legacy of prisons

The Florida penal system has been on an ignominious continuum, subjecting prisoners to beatings, rape, murder and vile exploitation since Reconstruction days. All these years later, reforms remain illusionary.

We can trace the rot back to 1877, when the state leased out inmates (often convicted on the flimsiest of charges) to farmers to mitigate their loss of slave labor.

At the turn of the last century, the brutal, often deadly mistreatment of prisoners forced into peonage labor on North Florida’s turpentine plantations became a national scandal. Life expectancy was only slightly better on the chain gangs used through much of the 20th century.

In 2012, anthropologists from the University of South Florida excavated dozens of unmarked graves at the notorious Dozier School for Boys in North Florida, finding the skeletal remains of children with broken bones and bashed skulls. The ghastly findings validated former inmates’ allegations that during its 111 years of operation, Dozier guards had horribly abused, even murdered boys in the now-abandoned juvenile lock-up.

In 2014 and 2015, Florida newspapers published a series of appalling stories about modern-day state prison guards who tortured and killed prisoners. Or assigned vicious inmates to act as their surrogates.

Guards were fired. There was talk of reform.

The emptiness of those promises was revealed last summer, when a surreptitious cellphone video shot on July 8 by an inmate at Lake Correctional Institute was posted on YouTube. The video revealed five guards relentlessly beating an inmate, clustered around him like wolves on prey, while other guards watched with nonchalance as if this was utterly commonplace.

The video, which found its way onto media websites and local newscasts, brought an investigation and firings. Without it, of course, the incident would have gone unremarked. As if such beatings were as ordinary as rain.

On Oct. 4, the Miami Herald posted portions of a crude documentary shot by an inmate inside Martin Correctional Institution. Scott Whitney, a 34-year-old convicted drug trafficker serving a 30-year sentence, hid a contraband cell phone camera in his hollowed-out Bible to capture graphic scenes inside a prison that was obviously untouched by reform. Whitney, who has since been consigned to solitary confinement, depicted prison life as a harrowing cascade of stabbings and fistfights in a cellblock nasty with filth and rodents. He showed scene after scene of prisoners reduced to a zombie state by K-2, a synthetic cannabinoid.

Guards in the video seemed utterly oblivious. I suppose that’s better than what happened in August at Lowell Correctional Institution, where four male prison guards slammed a 51-year-old mentally ill inmate onto the concrete floor of her cell, beat her, then dragged her out of view from security cameras to continue the brutality. Cheryl Weimar survived as a quadriplegic attached to a breathing tube.

Apparently, the guards at Lowell hadn’t received the memo about prison reform. They weren’t alone. Florida Department of Corrections statistics indicate that “use of force” incidents by guards has increased by 54 percent since 2013.

Perhaps you’re wondering how the prisoners shooting those videos obtained cellphones. It must be easy. According to the DOC’s annual report, 9,009 cellphones were seized from state prisoners in the 2017-2018 fiscal year. Along with 10,616 knives and shanks, 598 razors, 487 weapons fashioned from nails and 209 “locks in socks.” Add the confiscation of 36,177 grams of K2, 1,564 grams of cocaine and 3,986 grams of heroin and methamphetamine, and Florida’s prisons seem utterly anarchic.

It doesn’t help that 96,000 inmates are overseen by 17,500 guards, a count undermined by constant turnover. Forty-two percent of new hires quit in their first year. No wonder. A guard starts with a piddling annual salary of $33,000 and works 12-hour shifts in chronically understaffed prisons rife with stress, violence, danger and filth. The Whitney video said as much about guard working conditions as it did about prison life.

Less disgraceful pay could slow the turnover and maybe lessen the temptation to supplement incomes through the trafficking of drugs, cellphones, SIM cards, cigarettes and other fungible contraband. Indeed, DOC Secretary Mark Inch has asked legislators for an additional $89 million next year — not much for a system with a $2.7 billion annual budget, but enough, he said, to revert to 8 ½ hour workdays and provide modest raises for his guards.

Secretary Inch talked about changing the “culture” in the state prison system. Maybe, but he’s confronting a pathology that has been festering for 140 years.