Wednesday, Jul. 02, 2008

Atwater prison policies leave staff in grave danger, correctional officers say

In the wake of Jose Rivera's death, his current and former co-workers say his murder could have been avoided

By Corinne Reilly

creilly@mercedsun-star.com

"It's getting worse and worse," said an officer who is planning to leave the penitentiary after about a year there because of his concerns over safety. "Sometimes there's attacks (on correctional officers) twice a week. Sometimes it's every three weeks or so. All I know is it's way more than it should be … and not enough is being done to try to protect us."

No officials from USP Atwater or the Bureau of Prisons would answer questions for this story.

Just not enough staff

All the current and former correctional officers interviewed said inadequate staffing at the prison has made it unsafe there for both employees and inmates.

"There just aren't enough staff to do things the right way," said Ryan Silva, who left USP Atwater last month after working 12 years for the Bureau of Prisons, the last seven of them in Atwater. "It's dangerous. We've been saying that for a while."

Officials with the Bureau of Prisons have said USP Atwater actually has a better staff-to-inmate ratio than most comparable federal facilities: The systemwide average for similar federal prisons is about one staff person for every five prisoners, compared to a 1-to-4 ratio at the Atwater facility.

Union officials argue that staffing across the federal prison system is drastically inadequate, and correctional officers at USP Atwater said the 1-to-4 figure is misleading.

"If you divide the total number of people who work there by the total number of inmates, it probably comes out to 1-to-4, and that doesn't sound too bad," the officer who started about a year ago said. "But that includes every employee — from the secretaries to the dental technicians. And not all the staff are there for every shift, obviously. The inmates are. ... After 4 p.m., it's a skeleton crew."

Inside each of USP Atwater's 12 housing units, one correctional officer is typically alone with at least 100 inmates, the officers interviewed said. The housing units are separated and configured in such a way that officers in nearby units can't easily see inside or quickly access other units.

"That means you're pretty much on your own in there," said the officer who recently left the Bureau of Prisons after several years at USP Atwater.

Between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m., the officers interviewed said, about 25 employees are left oversee the prison's entire 1,100-inmate population.

Union officials have been calling for more staff across the federal system for years — and they are renewing those calls in light of Rivera's death.

"Our officers are in grave danger. It's that simple, and we've been shouting it for quite some time," said Bryan Lowry, president of the Council of Prison Locals of the American Federation of Government Employees. "Staffing is decreasing while inmate populations are increasing. We're also dealing with a far more aggressive population than we were five years ago."

No one from the Bureau of Prisons would provide information on how staffing levels have changed at USP Atwater over the years. Lowry said that systemwide the bureau would have to hire about 9,000 people to reach the same staff-to-inmate ratios it maintained 20 years ago.

Though some of the officers interviewed said USP Atwater has always been understaffed, most said it was manageable before 2005.

After Congress reduced funding for federal prisons that year, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, Harley Lappin, ordered staffing cuts across the system — reducing correctional employee rosters to what were termed "mission-critical posts."