Twenty South Carolina prisoners have been killed at the hands of fellow inmates in the past 16 months.
The staggering amount of violence, including gang-fueled bloodshed that left seven prisoners dead and 22 injured this week at Lee Correctional Institution, has some legislators calling for more oversight and transparency at the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Department Director Bryan Stirling told a news conference that officers stormed in and took the first of three dorms back from rioting prisoners about four hours after the melee began on Sunday night.
The officers were assembled at the rural prison as quickly as possible and went in only when it was safe to do so, he said.
After the institution was back under control, it then took more time to get injured inmates to hospitals. The prison is 64km east of Columbia.
“It shouldn’t take five hours to get in there and put some water on these fires,” said South Carolina Representative Justin Bamberg, a US Democrat and lawyer whose clients include the families of several inmates who were attacked in previous instances.
Contraband cellphones and staffing shortages are often blamed for many of the department’s woes.
Stirling, who oversees 21 prisons and more than 19,000 inmates, has said he has hired some of the 500 corrections officers he needs, but stressed the need for funding more officers.
South Carolina Senator Gerald Malloy, whose district includes Lee Correctional, said the government has a responsibility to keep the prison population safe and thinks lawmakers need to look at whether cost savings in corrections has been efficient.
“The burden comes back to the [South Carolina] General Assembly, what are you going to do?” he said.
Stirling — who served as then-South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s chief of staff before she appointed him to lead the department in 2013 — said his No. 1 security threat is cellphones, which gives inmates unfettered communication, allowing them to commit crimes inside and outside of prison.
The riot started on Sunday night as a gang war over territory, money and illegal items, such as cellphones, he said.
Stirling has urged the US Federal Communications Commission to allow the prison to block or jam cellphone signals to prevent inmates from using them.
Violence at Lee Correctional and other institutions throughout South Carolina is not surprising, Republican South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said at the news conference.
McMaster echoed Stirling’s call for the ability to jam cellphones in prison, but did not propose any other substantive alternatives.
“We do the best we can,” McMaster said.
From 2001 to 2014, an average of 60 inmates died annually in state prisons across the nation, US Bureau of Justice Statistics data showed.
Last year, a dozen South Carolina inmates were killed by other inmates.
“That’s staggeringly out of proportion,” said John Pfaff, a Fordham University law professor who tracks prison data. “It makes a prison that is supposed to be a secure facility — a place with no weapons, a place where you can’t leave — as dangerous as living in the most dangerous city in America.”
In February, an inmate killed a fellow prisoner at Lee Correctional, where this week’s attack took place among inmates armed with homemade knives used to slash and stab rival gang members.
An inmate stabbed two officers in 2015.
At Kirkland, another maximum-security prison, two inmates killed four prisoners last year in less than an hour.
Over the past few months, the Associated Press has been communicating with a Lee Correctional prisoner who used a contraband cellphone to offer insight into life behind bars.
Inmates there roam freely, have easy access to cellphones and drugs, and are often left to police themselves, he said.
The inmate spoke to AP on the condition of anonymity, because his cellphone is illegal and he fears retribution from other prisoners.
He described a facility run by gangs, and guards who take a hands-off approach, because they fear for their own safety.
In the most recent incident, he told AP that officers stayed in a control booth for hours on Sunday night, waiting for backup as inmates lay dying in pools of blood.
That echoes earlier anecdotes he shared about what happens whenever gang fights break out.
“The Crips and Bloods had a confrontation just a few feet from my cell door and, when the knives, machetes, axes, pipes and body armor came out, the cops were nowhere to be found,” he wrote in February.
To get away from the fighting, the inmate said he stays in his cell.
However, the door lock has been broken for months, so he said he and others jam materials into the lock to try to keep others from coming in.
“All of the doors to the cells are broken,” the inmate wrote. “At any time, I can let myself out of my cell, to do whatever it is that I would want to do.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was