Contumax Caninus
November 2002
The guards at the Spring Creek Correctional Center are thieves and that prison’s administrators are negligent fiscal managers and condone crime. Here is the picture:
Optimally, there are six (6) guards working in each of the two (2) general population cell-houses. These guards eat three (3) meals per day taking the food from the cell-house satellite kitchens. These guards do not pay for their meals ($2.00/meal) as required by Department of Corrections Policy and Procedure (DOC P&P) 302.13 and Institution Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 22.302.12
Here is the math:
$26,280.00 is stolen each year through a common practice that is condoned by prison administrators. $26,280.00 stolen each year by guards who, quoting guard Finch, can “recite departmental violations in their sleep.”*
During the last quarter of last fiscal year (FY ’02) the Food Service Manager authored a memorandum in which he called the approved staff dining room “a money pit.” That statement did not encompass the theft of food from the satellite kitchens as noted above. In the same memorandum, the Food Service Manager said that food service budget short-falls during the final months of that fiscal year meant that prisoner meals would be lacking fruit or desserts for certain meals, that regular meal entrees, like beef and chicken, would have to be replaced by casseroles, and he stated that special treats for staff would have to be cut back. He also described the steps necessary to cover the budgetary short-falls as “dangerous.”
It is said that the proof is in the pudding. But, where is the proof when you do not get the pudding? When prisoners complained of the theft of food by guards, prison administrators removed DOC P&P 302.13 and SOP 77.302.13 from the prison’s law library, so they could no longer be cited in complaints.
It might be argued, perhaps, that not ALL guards working in the cell-houses are stealing food, but they ALL participate, if only as witnesses to their co-worker’s theft and NONE have taken steps to stop it.
* See “When God Made Alaska Correctional Officers,” Anchorage Daily News, May 13, 2001, and “A Response to ‘When God Made Alaska Correctional Officers,’” Anchorage Daily News August 08, 2001