Federal and state prison officials are working around the clock on contingency plans for how to staff facilities in the case of massive staff shortages that could invite prisoner uprisings.
Some facilities are already gravely short-staffed to the coronavirus pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of inmates are being held across more than 1,800 federal and state prisons nationwide. Across the approximate 100 federal prisons, 280 staff at 35 facilities have tested positive. It’s not clear how many staff at the more than 1,700 state prison facilities have tested positive.
“At one point, health correctional officers will call in sick and not come to work,” said Mike Lawlor, former Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning, and now criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven. “That’s the point at which — and it can happen very quickly — you don’t have enough staff to operate the facility that’s when you run the risk of some sort of disturbance.”
The problem can escalate when correctional officers who are not sick fail to show up if they are worried about the safety of going to work due to sudden staff shortages.
Riots have been reported already in some regions. Last week, approximately 200 inmates at a state prison near Seattle escaped their normal holding areas as part of a revolt that was quickly brought under control. The inmates threatened to take hostage correctional officers and start a fire. On Sunday night, more than 100 inmates at a Kansas state-run prison rioted, throwing trash cans, throwing bulletin board papers on the crowd and yelling. The on-site staff subdued the group without any use of force, according to a local media report.
“We have some systems that are out there that have hundreds and hundreds of staff quarantined at home not able to come to work,” said Kevin Kempf, executive director of the Correctional Leaders Association, an organization of state prison directors from across the country. The dozens of state prison heads within CLA are talking with one another for ideas, as well as state governments and agencies, to create contingency plans. Those plans include backup staffing agreements with the National Guard, private security firms, and state and local law enforcement.
Prisoners are more on edge than usual because of the coronavirus threat.
Minimum and medium-security prisons hold inmates in dormitory-style settings, sometimes with 40 to 80 people in a large room. They lack the single and double cells to house each person safely, which could help avoid mass unrest. A riot in that type of open setting becomes more complicated in light of this public health scare because officers and medical staff cannot access inmates who are sick or need to be quarantined.
Inmates cycle in and out, but the biggest threat to coronavirus outbreaks within those facilities are the staff and contracted workers who go back into their communities after every shift, are potentially exposed to the virus, then return to the prison and can be asymptomatic for days.
“Unless the guards are going to sleep in the prison, someone’s got to come up with a solution because it’s going to infect people on the outside then it’s going to continue to be a risk [as staff goes into facilities],” said Nkechi Taifa, who leads the Justice Roundtable, a coalition of 100 organizations advocating for criminal justice reform.
Civil unrest can be reduced by stepping up communication with inmates, Kempf explained, because the reason people act out is related to feeling they do not understand what is happening and what will happen next.
“You start to add as much type recreation stuff as possible. You’re piping movies and those types of things in the TV system and issuing TVs — anything you can do to show goodwill,” said Kempf.
Having personnel sleep at the facility is a nonstarter, but state prison directors are talking about boosting staff pay in the short-term as an incentive for worried workers to show up for shifts, Kempf said.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) declined an interview request and referred the Washington Examiner to information available on its website that states all federal prison staff and inmates are given cloth face masks. Staff are required to wear them when in quarantine or isolation units, but not while in other areas of the property where they can stand 6 feet away from others.
“BOP performs pre-screening of all employees reporting to work and requires exposed workers to wear a mask for 14 days after last exposure,” according to the BOP website. “They are also expected to perform regular self-monitoring for symptoms, practice social distancing, and to disinfect and clean their work spaces. Anyone who develops signs or symptoms of illness are sent home.”
