Cell searches are a routine occurrence in prison. Typically, they are conducted to find contraband (considered to be anything from excess socks and magazines to weapons and drugs). As long as they are not used as a tool of retaliation, even as a prisoner, I have no real objection to cell searches. After all, watching my fellow prisoners act like idiots after drinking ‘pruno’ is not the least bit entertaining, and the knife that may be found is one I have no need to fear, nor counter. That said, the lockdown of the Alaska Section of the Central Arizona Detention Center (CADC), and the subsequent shakedown, were singularly notable.
To provide a minimum foundation, let me explain that Alaska has shipped approximately 1000 of its prisoners to a privately owned prison in Arizona. These prisoners are housed under a contract between the Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Corrections Corporation of America, Inc. (CCA). CADC houses prisoners from other states besides Alaska, as well as federal prisoners. The reputations, nor disreputation, of CCA and CADC, nor the merits of privately operated prisons will be discussed here in detail.
According to court documents submitted by John Hagar 1, an Alaska superior Court-Appointed Compliance Monitor, CADC officials claim that the lockdown and searches conducted between March 9 – 12, 2000, were prompted by numerous positive urinalysis results that showed that prisoners housed in the prison’s segregation unit had been using drugs – leading prison operators to suspect a major breach of security involving both staff and prisoners in a narcotics smuggling operation. However, that justification is contrasted by statements of prisoners who were subjected to those searches, who claim that the reason given for the lockdown and searches, offered during discussion of the incident between their counsel, CADC officials, Alaska DOC prisoncrats and their counsel, and the Court Appointed Compliance Monitor, was to re-assert dominance over Alaska prisoners after the February 18, 2000, acquittals of Mark Hartvigsen and Edward Martin on charges of escape from that facility. Logic would lend belief in the latter, as CADC staff (some of whom may have been narcotic smuggling co-conspirators) work throughout the facility, but only the Alaska Section of the prison was locked-down and searched.
Regardless of the reasons for doing so, the lockdown and cell searches in the CADC Alaska Section began with the scanning of prisoners and their cells by a K-9 unit (drug-sniffing dog) – apparently without positive result. At this point, CADC Warden, Michael Samburg, ordered in the CADC Special Operations Response Team (SORT). John Hagar characterizes the SORT unit as a “squad of officers who receive special training and equipment to respond to serious use of force situations.” It is at this point, involving these CCA employees that the abuse of Alaskan prisoners began in earnest.
According to Hagar’s report, officers conducted the searches dressed in full riot gear, brandishing batons and a 49mm gas canister gun that was, supposedly, “not authorized by CADC officials.” He reports that during the search process prisoners “were harassed, forced to assume unnecessary, humiliating, and painful postures (e.g. on their knees with their legs crossed and foreheads pressed to a concrete wall), and threatened. In other cases, inmates who asked questions or whom SORT personnel deemed to be uncooperative were “taken down” or otherwise restrained. A number of inmate injuries were reported that were consistent with take downs and other forms or restraints.
Prisoners who were present during the searches report additional maltreatment, including being strip-searched in the presence and view of female CADC employees and female Kelwell (the food service contractor) employees, the beating of prisoners (resulting in at least one fracture), and the denial of showers. Moreover, in addition to prisoners being threatened with “attitude adjustment” beatings, as reported by Hagar, some prisoners report that the 49mm gas gun was held to their heads or behind their knees while being menaced by SORT members.
John Hagar’s report states that there was no evidence that Alaskan prisoners resisted the search process or that there had been a precipitating event that justified the use of riot gear (i.e. black jumpsuits, boots, helmets, face-obscuring masks, flak jackets, shin guards, lead-filled sap gloves, batons, K-Bar combat-style knives, and gas canister guns). He also makes clear that the searches were done in an inconsistent manner, that CADC staff acted unprofessionally, and that SORT personnel were poorly supervised.
Contrary to the public statements of Corrections Commissioner, Margaret Pugh, Alaskan prisoners are not safe in it's Arizona contract facility. John Hagar, appointed by an Alaska court to be an unbiased observer, called the March cell searches “a discouraging development because they represent the third major use of force situation at CADC that has been out of control in the past two years.”
Almost as an aside, Hagar also notes that “Even though hundreds of cells were searched, very little contraband was found, and apparently, nothing was found involving narcotic smuggling. All in all, three days of searches worked to damage the relationship between CADC management and Alaskan inmates.”
Damaged the relationship between the Keepers and the Kept?!?
What about the relationship between Alaskan citizens (including prisoners’ families and friends) and their public servants? How do you define the actions of Commissioner Pugh when, with smiling face and the fat check of public office resting in her pocket, she stares into the camera’s eye on Juneau’s cable program “Point to Point” and declares her confidence in the safety of prisoners exiled into the hands of the Corrections Corporation of America, Inc., while at the very same time she is in possession of video tape, not only of the incident under discussion, but also video tape of Alaskan prisoners in the CADC segregation unit being “extracted” from their cells on November 9, 1998, by using the same SORT unit tactics, including the jabbing of prisoners with broom handles through their cell door tray slots and the spraying of “chemical agents” in the faces of fully chained and restrained prisoners laying helpless on the ground?
The Alaska Department of Corrections’ evaluation of the March 9 – 12 cell searches has been filed under court seal. Although videotaped, that tape had never been released to the public. Videotape of the November 9, 1998, cell extractions has not been released, but was mentioned briefly in the mainstream press. Hiding the truth in the shadows of prevarication is a practice that prisoners.org is working very hard to bring to an end. Efforts are underway to bring video and official documentation of these and similar events to your computer screens.
Stay tuned for updates.
Anthony L. Brown
©
26 November 2000
1 COURT APPOINTED COMPLIANCE MONITOR’S OCTOBER 1999 THROUGH MAY 2000 COMPLIANCE REPORT, Cleary et al. V. Smith et al., 3AN-81-5274 Civil, pages 9 – 11.