The warden and chief security officer of a New Mexico prison have been fired by the for-profit company that manages the facility, three weeks after a riot that involved D.C. prison inmates housed there.
Don Dorsey, warden of the Torrance County Correctional Facility, was dismissed recently, as was William Penneycuff, director of security for the 900-inmate institution in Estancia, about 30 miles east of Albuquerque. Their dismissal by the privately run Corrections Corp. of America comes after 32 D.C. inmates injured several officers during a late-night riot.
Their successors, Warden Rick Hudson and security chief Chris Rhodes, took over the facility on December 4. Both came from other CCA prisons.
'Following an internal review of management practices, there was a decision made to make changes in those two positions,' said Susan Hart, vice president of communications for CCA. 'It was not entirely related to D.C. inmates, but about inmate management in general.'
The prison, which houses about 160 D.C. inmates in a dorm, has had three incidents involving D.C. inmates in the past two years. Inmates attacked officers in 1999, and earlier this year some of them attempted an escape.
Then, just after midnight Nov. 11, officers tried to turn off the television in a cellblock filled with maximum-security District inmates. According to a prison advocate, officers had kept changing the hours when the television had to be shut down for the night. That night, a movie had started when the officers ordered that the television be turned off.
'The movie incident was sort of the last straw,' said Eric Lotke, executive director for the D.C. Prisoners Legal Services Project, a nonprofit group that has represented inmates in lawsuits against CCA. 'What the riot revealed was problems in the prison, rather than problems with the inmates.'
Two officers were seriously injured when they were stabbed with homemade weapons, according to Hart. No inmates were injured, but Lotke said there was evidence of excessive force in quelling the two-hour melee.
CCA has had consistent problems in handling the District's most violent inmates.
Odie Washington, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections, said his staff had voiced concerns about staffing levels and programs in New Mexico. 'I think these changes [dismissals] are a good sign they are trying to improve and that they take incidents like this seriously,' he said.