By David Pitt
Associated Press
FORT DODGE, Iowa — The names and Social Security numbers of nearly two dozen Fort Dodge prison employees were found in a prison barber shop where inmates could have seen them, prompting an arbitrator to order the state to pay for three years of credit protection for the workers.
A corrections officer found a document identifying 23 employees in a file drawer on Aug. 4, 2011. Prison officials said the document was a form that was about a decade old and related to the prison’s severe weather plan.
Employees were initially given a year of credit protection, but the union representing them argued for more, noting that some inmates who may have had access to the document had yet to be released from prison.
“We searched all the areas of the prison since this document was found and we never found one other personnel document in the secure area of the prison,” McKinney said. “We continue to follow that policy and to this date, it is still somewhat of a mystery on why, one 10-year-old document was found in the secure area of the prison.”
The Fort Dodge Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison, houses more than 1,300 inmates and has a staff of nearly 300.
The Iowa Department of Corrections paid for a year of credit monitoring for the employees from August 2011 to August 2012. But when their union insisted the state should extend the protection, the state refused.
“I don’t know why records would have been in the old barbershop to begin with,” said Danny Homan, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Iowa Council 61. “Records shouldn’t be anywhere but in the employees’ personnel files.”
He said allowing them to be left where inmates could have seen them was a blatant violation of the union contract.
“You have to protect these people’s identities,” Homan said.
Arbitrator Jay Fogelberg’s opinion shows he found the state negligent in allowing the documents to be accessible to inmates.
Fogelberg wrote in the June 17 report that while none of the employees reported problems with identity theft or credit records, many of the inmates at the prison had committed identity theft “and may wish to cause harm to staff members while inside the facility or after they are released.”
The state had argued that one year of monitoring was fair and reasonable. State officials said the union wasn’t entitled to further monitoring because workers couldn’t demonstrate any damages occurred.
Fogelberg disagreed and ordered additional monitoring to be implemented immediately.