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| Iowa Prison Officer Beaten, Sent to Hospital |
| By Des Moines Register |
| Published: 06/05/2003 |
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A correctional officer at the Clarinda state prison was knocked unconscious and beaten by an inmate on May 24, an incident that union leaders say underscores serious understaffing at the prison. Corrections department officials said last week that staffing was normal at the prison, and the assault was caused by a defiant inmate. Officer Colleen Strong was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Clarinda after the attack and is recovering at home, said Correctional Officer Todd Williams, president of Local 525 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees at Clarinda. 'She has multiple bruises on her face and head. Her ribs on her right side were bruised. She has multiple goose eggs on the back of her head and the top of her head,' Williams said. The incident involving Strong was the latest in a string of troubling incidents at the Clarinda prison. The incidents include an unsuccessful, but bloody, double suicide attempt recently involving two inmates who cut themselves with shaving razors, Williams said. There also have been several inmate assaults in recent months on prison employees. 'We are continually telling everybody that there are problems here, but we can't get our legislators or management to be aware of how dangerous it is getting to be,' Williams said. 'What is going to happen is that we are going to be pulling a body out of here someday.' Jan Corderman, state AFSCME president, said understaffing is a problem at all of Iowa's nine prisons, which hold 8,373 inmates. 'The problems are worse at Clarinda because we have been understaffed there since it was built,' she said. 'So when we have budget cuts, it makes it worse for that particular facility.' The state corrections agency lost about 500 positions the past two years because of budget cuts, reducing the department's staffing to about 3,800 employees. Some new replacements have been hired in recent months, though, because state legislators provided additional money. Williams, the Clarinda union official, said that prison usually has 32 to 35 correctional officers on duty on a Saturday night to oversee the prison's 867 inmates. But five officers were sent home on May 24 to save on overtime expenses, which reduced security at the institution, he said. Fred Scaletta, an Iowa Department of Corrections spokesman in Des Moines, disputed Williams' short-staffing claim, saying the prison had a normal number of correctional officers on duty at the time of the incident. The shift had begun with 35 officers, and five were sent home following the inmates' evening meal, after prison visits were concluded for the day, and as other daily activities wound up, he said. 'At the time of this incident, every inmate in the institution was already locked up for the night, except for this one inmate refusing to go into his cell,' Scaletta said. |
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