By Lauren R. Dorgan
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — State officials are investigating a security breach after an inmate in Concord was caught with a list containing the names of all Corrections Department employees as of 2008 and a string of data on each, including their Social Security numbers.
The list was found inside the cell of a minimum-security inmate during a routine search Friday, according to Jeff Lyons, a spokesman for the department.
Right now, Lyons said, the department is both investigating how the inmate obtained the list and informing employees about the breach. While a mass e-mail has been sent to employees to alert them to the situation, Lyons said, officials plan to send out formal notifications by theof the week.
Officials believe the list, which dated from March 2008, came from the recently closed Laconia prison and was at a Concord prison warehouse to be shredded, according to an e-mail sent to prison employees. The inmate worked at the prison warehouse, Lyons said; it is not yet known what, if anything, he did with the list or how long he had it.
“We’re not 100 percent certain how this got into his hands,” Lyons said.
The list included the names, titles, positions, departments, labor grades and Social Security numbers of all of the roughly 1,000 employees of the department as of March 1, 2008. The list was produced for the human resources office, Lyons said. The list, Lyons said, did not include other personal information, such as phone numbers, addresses or family details.
According to an e-mail sent to corrections employees by corrections Capt. Jon Fouts, officials believe the “inmate had the document for less than one day and did not have the opportunity to do anything with it.” Fouts wrote that he had suspended the “shredding operation” at the warehouse and officials were now looking into “what we need to do to use a shredding service to destroy all documents like this in the future.”
Lyons didn’t release the inmate’s name and said he did not yet know if the man would be charged with a crime.
“If criminal charges are warranted, we will definitely make sure charges are filed against the individual,” Lyons said.
State Employees’ Association President Gary Smith said his union is calling on the state to conduct a “full investigation” of the breach and an “after-action debrief on how we can prevent this from ever happening in the future.”
“It is very shocking to find out that inmates have corrections employees’ information, and it’s very concerning and very alarming,” said Smith, a corrections officer himself. He said he wondered if “shortstaffing and budget woes” were the root causes.
Copyright 2009 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor