By J.D. Prose
Beaver County Times
HARRISBURG, Pa. — There were almost 4,200 violent incidents reported in Pennsylvania’s state prisons over a 15-month audited period, the state’s auditor general said Thursday, including nearly 1,000 assaults on guards.
Calling on the state to hire more prison guards, Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said he was shocked by “the sheer number of violent incidents at our prisons and the significant dangerous situations that many of the staffs, guards and non-guards are dealing with on a day-by-day basis.”
DePasquale added that inmates might not elicit sympathy from many people, but the majority are also living in violent facilities while they are ostensibly being rehabilitated for release back into society.
“We must be vigilant that those who are re-entering society have the tools to do so,” he said.
Guards and other prison employees are often overlooked because they work “in the shadow of society” unlike police officers and firefighters, DePasquale said. “Why? To be blunt, most of us aren’t going to prisons every day,” he said.
According to the audit covering January 2015 through March 2016, there were 4,198 reported assaults or fights in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ 25 state prisons and one boot camp housing a total of 48,500 inmates.
On average during the audit period, there were 65 assaults on staff per month and 136 inmate fights per month.
SCI-Muncy in Lycoming County (1,386 inmates) had the least number of total incidents with 46 while SCI-Mercer in Mercer County (1,444 inmates) had the most at 283 incidents.
The audit found 979 assaults on prison staff, 206 attempted assaults on prison staff, 909 inmate-on-inmate assaults, 40 attempted inmate-on-inmate assaults, and 2,041 fights.
A fight is defined as two or more people actively involved in an altercation while an assault is an incident in which one inmate is aggressive and the other does not fight back.
SCI-Fayette in Luzerne Township reported 170 incidents during the audit period while SCI-Greene in Waynesburg reported 145. As of March 31, SCI-Fayette had 2,060 inmates and SCI-Greene had 1,727, the audit said.
There were 32 assaults on staff, six attempted staff assaults, 37 inmate assaults and 92 inmate fights at SCI-Fayette during the audit period. At SCI-Greene, there were 34 assaults on staff, 15 attempted staff assaults, 21 inmate assaults and 69 inmate fights.
Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association president Jason Bloom said the audit’s findings show that guards are “grossly outnumbered” and the state should hire more of them.
“We know and accept that our jobs are dangerous, but the statistics released today by Auditor General DePasquale are alarming,” Bloom said. “They reveal a desperate need for the Commonwealth to do a much better job in protecting its officers. That starts with giving us the backup we need by hiring more officers.”
Bloom also said the Legislature should pass a bill co-sponsored by state Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-South Union Township, and state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson Township, that would require guards be provided pepper spray on duty.
“It’s one more advantage we could desperately use in our daily interactions with the most dangerous criminals in Pennsylvania,” Bloom said.
Mahoney and Snyder introduced their bill in the spring after touring SCI-Fayette and hearing complaints from guards.
The audit’s initial purpose was to review reporting procedures of violent incidents. Seven prisons, including SCI-Greene, were tested, DePasquale said, and auditors made several recommendations involving incident reports and tracking procedures.