The Associated Press via The San Francisco Chronicle
MOUNT OLIVE, W.Va. — In a housing pod at West Virginia’s only maximum-security prison, two things separate a lone correctional officer from 72 inmates: a canister of pepper spray and a line of red tape on the floor.
Neither is a real deterrent. This spring, the young blond officer at the desk was slashed and stabbed by an inmate who melted a razor blade into a plastic pen cap. The guard was back on duty at the Mount Olive Correctional Center within weeks.
Attacks like that have more than doubled in the state’s correctional facilities in the past five years, according to figures obtained by The Associated Press. Both administrators and guards expect the numbers to rise as the state’s chronically overcrowded prisons and jails continue to swell with new inmates.
The number of inmate-on-inmate attacks in state prisons surged from 64 in 2007 to 148 last year, even though half the population was in for a nonviolent offense. In the same period, Division of Corrections figures show the number of assaults on prison employees shot up from 47 to 101.
Full story: Assaults double as W.Va. inmate population swells