10/12/2004
The state correction department's internal report on July's kidnapping and assault on a counselor at Delaware Correctional Center has earned nearly universal scorn since its release last week, for reasons ranging from its long gestation to its failure to pinpoint how the tragedy occurred.
But the report's most significant problem is one that was built in when it was ordered: Its focus was too narrow. And the same flaw threatens to mar the work of the outside study that Gov. Ruth Ann Minner has finally ordered.
Though the internal report avoids assigning blame for the rape of Cassandra Arnold by inmate Scott Miller, it isn't quite the whitewash some of us expected. It encapsulates the interviews that were conducted, allowing readers to form their own judgments. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to discern a lax attitude about security apparently permeates the state's largest prison.
Employee after employee told investigators that sliding security doors were routinely propped open. Several said it wasn't a problem because it mainly occurred during shift changes, when prisoners were locked in their cells. Others claimed it had become routine within weeks after the unit opened in December 2000.
The report also reveals an unsettling lack of response to obvious problems. A push-button intercom system, which was supposed to allow the officer operating those doors from a control room to communicate with officers in the hallways, hasn't worked for almost three years, yet nobody in the unit could say if repairs had ever been requested.
That situation led to complaints about delays in opening the doors - complaints the deputy warden said typically took two to three weeks to reach him - which probably explains why officers had taken to simply propping them open.
These problems appear to have been compounded by a troubling lack of training and established procedure.
Sgt. Lachelle Green, who was in the control pod at the time of the incident, told investigators that she had been doing that job for nine months, but had never received any training on how to do it - she had picked it up by observing others.
And though prisoners were often taken to the administration area where the kidnapping took place, especially to take outside phone calls or to have bad news broken to them, Classification Officer Jayme Jackson said there was no established procedure for trans- porting prisoners there. The lack of formal protocol undoubtedly helped Miller slip into the area.
The report concludes staffing problems played no role, and in a narrow sense that's probably true - the unit was only one person short. But the picture that emerges is of a prison where corners are cut, procedures ignored or made up on the fly, problems never brought to the attention of higher-ups - a pattern that seems endemic in chronically understaffed organizations.
Now the buck has been passed to a seven-member task force charged with examining security lapses and policies that may have contributed to the tragedy. If it scrutinizes only this specific incident, the bigger picture will be missed again.
The flaws in Delaware's prison system go well beyond propped-open security doors. An unwillingness to acknowledge that is the root of the problem.
Contact Al Mascitti at 324-2866 or amascitti@delawareonline.com.
