Understaffed, Unsafe, Unacceptable
By Clyde Weiss
When things go terribly wrong inside a jail or prison, there's usually an underlying institutional cause." That insightful observation was recently made by former U.S. Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach, co-chair of the national Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons. They are words that Lt. Aubrey Fletcher unfortunately knows all too well.
A Maryland CO for the past 17 years, Fletcher was attempting to get an inmate to return to his cell at the Eastern Correctional Institution near Salisbury when something did go terribly wrong. Fletcher, 43, a member of Local 3478 (Council 92), recalls in an interview that the inmate turned around and hit him in the forehead, knocking him down, then "pounded on me." Another inmate joined in, and "they knocked me out, from what I'm told."
Since the assault, in October 2004, Fletcher has been unable to work. "I've been to a bunch of neurosurgeons and neurologists," and has learned that he may have brain damage. He suffers constant ringing in his right ear "and a headache just about every day."
Root cause
Fletcher says understaffing is the "underlying institutional cause" — as Katzenbach put it — that led to the attack. Others have backed him up. At a March legislative hearing on unsafe conditions in Maryland prisons, an Eastern Correctional major testified that a cadre of 46 lieutenants in 2003 had shrunk to 27.
The staffing shortage is systemwide. The Maryland Division of Correction reported to ACU News that the number of COs of all ranks dropped from 5,422 in 2002 to 5,006 this year (about 4,000 of them are represented by Council 92).
Meanwhile, the state's inmate population grew — from 23,302 in 2001 to an estimated 24,590 this year.
Logic suggests a strong correlation between the decline in correctional staff, the increase in the inmate population and the frequency of assaults, and the statistics tell their own tragic tale. The number of inmate-on-staff assaults, according to the Division of Correction, jumped by 14.7 percent from between fiscal 2001 and 2004. Assaults — ranging from "serious physical" to "bodily fluid" — increased from 312 in 2001 to 358 in 2004. Fletcher and Council 92 that contend assaults are actually understated by the division.
The union has been trying to increase pressure on Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R) to boost funding for safety improvements. The governor has the exclusive authority to hike the corrections budget. "We've been battling the administration in hearings," says Ronnie Bailey, Council 92's executive director. The governor and other officials, he says, have "refused to meet with us to discuss these issues."
Joining forces
"We've got an anti-union governor who doesn't care about the corrections officers and staff," says ACU National Steering Committee Chair Glenard S. Middleton Sr., who is also executive director of Maryland Council 67 and an IVP. Consequently, Councils 67 and 92 are meeting to create a coalition that will increase public pressure for improved safety at state and local facilities. That will include training COs to take their message to the legislature.
"Our plan will lead up to next November," when Ehrlich is up for re-election, says Middleton, who knows first-hand what trouble understaffing can cause. He worked for 17 years as a CO, reaching the rank of sergeant at the Baltimore City Jail (now the state-run Division of Pretrial Detention and Services, where the council represents about 700 COs).
Mandatory overtime has become the dangerous counterpart to understaffing, says George Gisin, staff rep for county correctional Locals 3080 and 3495: "If you don't get time off to relax, you burn out." That has helped to increase the danger of assaults, adds Baltimore City Detention Center Local 3737 Staff Rep. Archer Blackwell. Yet, he points out, prison administrators "don't accurately report those incidents. They obscure the way they report and keep records."
The administration insists it has no staffing problem. In a letter to the union, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said "a perceived staff shortage" was not responsible for violent incidents in its prisons. A department spokesman told The Baltimore Sun, "We believe these are the appropriate staffing levels."
Lieutenant Fletcher says he knows otherwise. "The people in headquarters don't care, because they don't have to walk the tiers."
