By C1 Staff
LINCOLN, Nebraska — Nebraska State Penitentiary officials kept the prison locked down Tuesday morning, a day after dozens of inmates refused to return to their cells in protest.
Thirty-three inmates wouldn’t return to their cells for several hours after eating to protest a 16-month-old policy limiting the number of inmates who can be in the prison yard at one time, state Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Dawn-Renee Smith said in an email.
The prisoners didn’t hurt anyone or cause major damage, Smith said. Fires were set in several trash cans, which prison staff extinguished. Smith declined to say if inmates started them, but said prison staff is investigating and will write up and discipline inmates who broke rules.
Officials stopped letting hundreds of inmates gather in the yard in August 2012 to tamp down on what they said was a growing number of violent, gang-related incidents.
“The scheduled yard system has provided for safer, more orderly management of (prison) facilities,” she said in the email.
The new schedule cut down on the amount of hours inmates can spend in the yard. An inmate could spend up to eight hours a day in the yard under the old system, inmate Jose Rodriguez said in an August interview. Rodriguez, 41, is serving a 40- to 50-year sentence at the penitentiary for sexual assault and false imprisonment.
But prisoners also have decried cuts, which also happened in August 2012, to the amount of time they can study for their high school diploma, go to clubs and attend Bible study.
An inmate used to be able to study for four hours a day, or 20 hours a week, and get his GED in nine months to a year, Rodriguez said. Now they have two hours a week to study, 10 percent of what they had. For a criminal who comes in to do a couple years for robbing a liquor store, he’s not going to get his high school diploma.
“It’s virtually impossible,” Rodriguez said.