By Andy Sher
Chattanooga Times/Free Press
NASHVILLE — A review by experts of Tennessee prison operations recommends the state Department of Correction make major changes in how prisoner assaults on guards are classified and also calls for changes to controversial staff scheduling changes.
Among other things, the American Correctional Association is recommending doing away with a departmental rule that makes injury necessary for an assault charge.
ACA officials this afternoon outlined their recommendations to a Senate panel following experts’ visits to five of Tennessee’s 13 prisons. That comes after months of complaints and controversy among correctional officers and some lawmakers who charge Haslam administration cost-saving moves and policies on assaults have endangered safety.
Officials say that overall, their examination “reveals sustained positive outcomes,” citing a key indicator of problems -- inmates escapes from “secure facilities.
“There have been no escapes from secure custody since February 2009. There have been no escapes in the past 6 years,” the report says.
The report notes that elements of correctional staff and inmate safety are reflected in “observable operational characteristics. During its visits, the team determined that all 5 units visited, including the most secure and complex in the system, were consistently operationally disciplined, stable and productive in meeting their critical mission.”
Nonetheless, in their report and presentation to the Senate State and Local Government Subcommittee, Jeffrey Washington, the Correctional Association’s deputy executive director, and former Louisiana prisons chief Richard L. Stalder, called for major changes in the two key points of controversy that critics say have led to massive turnover in some facilities.
The first involved Correction Commissioner Derrick Schofield’s changes of correctional officers’ work week from a seven-day schedule to a 28-day schedule. The move, intended to save the state money, changed how overtime is accumulated and paid. That’s led to complaints from many about overtime which now can now take well over a month before it’s paid.
“These factors contributed to concern on the part of the affected class of employees,” the report says.
The report recommends going to a two-week period.
Meanwhile, the report found a “gap exists in the offender disciplinary process and enumerated rules in the area of staff assaults.”
Under Tennessee’s rules, for an inmate to be charged with assaulting a staffer, the act must include the element of “intentional injury” to the employee. If there’s no injury, it’s usually classified as “Staff/Inmate Provocation,” a lesser offense.
The report notes that the rule was originally intended to deal with “intentionally or knowingly causing phusical contact with staff or another inmate that a reasonable person would regard as offensie but which results in no injury.”
It was intended to be used in “incidental contact” between the offender and staffer “and not assault contact.”
But, the report says, “the result, however, of the requirement for intentional injury being present prior to the charging of an inmate for staff assault left assaultive non-injurious incidents as usually chargeable only under the provocation rules.”
So the experts are recommending both current classifications be scratched and for Tennessee officials to start all over with these new definitions of disciplinary offenses:
* Staff assault with weapon (Class A offense): Offenders shall not assault any staff member, visitor or guest using any object as a weapon. The use of teeth constitute a violation of the rule. Contact does not necessarily have to be made for a violations.
* Staff assault without weapons (Class A): “Hostile” physical contact or attempted physicial contact with a staff member, visitor or guest is not permitted. Includes hitting, shoving, wrestling, kicking and “similar behaviors.” Contact does not necessarily have to be made for this rule to be violated.
* Defiance (Class A or B): No offender shall curse, insult or threaten a staff member, visitor or gues=t “in any manner.” Prohibited conduct includes abusive or insulting conversations, phone calls or gestures by any offender. Moreover, no inmate shall obstruct, resist, distract or attempt to elude staff in the performance of their duties. Nor shall any offender intimidate or attempt to intimidate staff to manipulate staff’s actions.
* Fighting with weapon (Class A): An inmate shall not assault any other inmnate using any object as a weapon, including any liquid or solid substances thrown or “otherwise projected” at an inmate. Use of teeth constitutes a violation as well. Contact does not necessarily have to be made.
* Disorderly conduct (Class B or C): Staff, visitors and guests should be treated “courteously and shall not be subjected to disorderly or intrusive conduct, including incidental touching.” Boisterous and disorderly behavior not allowed.
* Fighting (Class A or B): Hostile physicial contact or attempted physicial contact with another inmate is not allowed. That includes hitting, shoving, wrestling, kicking and similar behaviors and actual contact does not have to be made.
* Injury would no longer be a defining term in the disciplinary rules “as it is not a final determinative factor in evaluating the seriousness of the offense.”