Prison reforms in South Carolina can't wait

Guest Opinion By Brad Nettles  It took one of the deadliest prison brawls in decades to get everyone’s attention, but help finally is on the way for South Carolina’s troubled prisons. A national association of correctional professionals will investigate what went wrong at Lee prison a week ago today, triggering the outbreak of inmate-on-inmate violence. Volunteers with the S.C. State Guard will patrol Lee’s perimeter and other prisons to help keep contraband from being thrown over fences. And new cellphone-blocking technology should be in place at Lee by the end of May. That’s a good start. But based on what’s been learned so far, in part from inmate reports made via smuggled cellphones, there are some immediate fixes that need to be made. Inmates at Lee have claimed locks on many of the cells door are broken. If accurate, that’s outrageous. Any such problems should be fixed immediately for the safety of both prisoners and correctional officers. Emergency response times must be improved. It took correctional officers some four hours to muster the personnel needed to stop the violence. Prisons director Bryan Stirling should ask for and get whatever help he needs in assembling teams capable of quickly stopping violent outbreaks at any of the state’s prisons. The problem also calls into question the wisdom of putting prisons in areas far from emergency services. Prison officials also should redouble efforts to make sure inmate transfers don’t concentrate too many violent offenders in one place or unwittingly house rival gangs together. Fixing the deeper problems will take time. Brad Livingston, formerly the head of the Texas Department of Corrections, is expected to assemble a capable team of experts to review policies and procedures and interview everyone involved in the melee, but results of that probe likely won’t be available until after the criminal investigations are completed. In the meantime, Mr. Stirling must continue to increase staffing and pay, look to modern surveillance systems to leverage staffing and work aggressively to reduce internal corruption. Greater emphasis must also be placed on rehabilitation, with prisoners given more opportunities for staying out of trouble. Denying prisoners things as simple as regular showers, visitors or “yard time” can fuel violent responses. For too long, the cost of authorized telephone calls to and from prisons has been artificially inflated, enriching private contractors, making it harder for inmates to maintain family relationships and driving up demand for contraband cellphones. Correctional officers will have to do a better job of confiscating weapons, breaking up criminal enterprises and stopping the flow of contraband. That will require greater cooperation with outside law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, perhaps a statewide task force. Mr. Stirling was right in his initial assessment. “These people are fighting about real money and real territory when they are incarcerated.” The underground prison economy must be disrupted. At the same time, we must be willing to commit more tax dollars toward creating less violent, more humane prisons. The statewide prison population dropped about 14 percent between 2010 and 2016, saving the state an estimated $491 million, according to the Pew Charitable Trust. But only a fraction of those savings have been plowed back into improving our prisons. After the spasm of violence at Lee, officials can no longer turn their back on a system in shambles.