PELICAN BAY, CA - Inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison obtained the personal information of at least 31 officers this year in a warehouse where prisoners work and on a shelf in a gym, according to a lawsuit filed against the state corrections department.

Inmates in the maximum-security prison were caught on three occasions with documents that included officers' names, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, home addresses, according to the suit filed by the prison officers union.
One officer discovered fraudulent charges on her MasterCard that included an Internet search for her husband, also an officer in the prison.

"Isn't that something?" said Chuck Alexander, vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. "When you give access of that information to people already convicted of felonies -- it's egregious to say the least."

The suit, which names the corrections department and its secretary, James Tilton, was filed May 23 in Sacramento Superior Court. Prison officials were served with the suit on Wednesday. Margot Bach, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said she could not speak specifically about pending litigation.

"There are policies in place about how documents are handled and destroyed," Bach said. "Generally speaking, documents are not handled by inmates."

Rick Newton, president of the officers union's chapter at Pelican Bay, said he believes prison managers have secured all personal information behind lock and key. Still, he hopes for a permanent solution. The lawsuit asks for prison officials to adopt new policies, investigate all data breaches and help affected employees protect their credit.

"Hopefully, with the resolution of this lawsuit, we can bring the issue to light and get some results," Newton said.

The alleged incidents come nearly a decade after breaches at Wasco State Prison in Kern County sparked a state audit critical of department policies. The Wasco prison incidents in the late-1990s led to a state law regulating inmates' access to confidential data that the officers union contends has been broken.

The Pelican Bay suit alleges that two prison officers have been affected by inmates obtaining personal information. An officer whose information was found in the warehouse learned that her credit card had been used to search for data about her husband, another man and for a Western Union money transfer, the suit says.

Another officer whose information was stored in the gym spent $129 to place an alert on her credit accounts. The alleged first breach at Pelican Bay was discovered Feb. 9, Newton said.

An inmate sentenced on fraud-related charges told officers that another prisoner sought his guidance to defraud officers. The inmate hoping to start the scam had been assigned to work in the prison warehouse, Newton said. The suit says officers found the officers' personal information at the inmate's work space, and then officials locked down the prison and launched a search. Christopher Miller, the Sacramento attorney representing the officers union, noted the irony of the disclosure.

"Now you have the state agency responsible for imprisoning people who commit identity theft -- and it's exposing some of its employees by being careless or reckless or negligent," he said.

After the first alleged breach, Newton complained and learned that corrections officials had launched an internal investigation.

Bach said the investigation relates to how inmates moved documents from an unlocked area in the warehouse to a locked location. Another alleged data breach was discovered March 23.

"The officers were enraged," Newton said.

Maximum-security inmates apparently accessed boxes of officers' personal information in a gym, the suit says. The boxes were sitting on shelves next to a weight bench, "not protected against access by the inmates," the lawsuit says. The forms included officers' names, Social Security numbers and work attendance information.

Some forms were found stuffed into a punching bag in the gym, and one was found concealed in a punching bag in an inmate's cell, Newton said.

The suit says a third exposure occurred April 6, when an inmate working in the warehouse was found with a prison employee's medical record listing a name and Social Security number.