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| Director Says S. C. Needs New Type of Prison |
| By Augusta Chronicle |
| Published: 07/28/2003 |
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The late Gov. Lester Maddox once said, 'What Georgia needs is a better class of prisoners.' What South Carolina needs, according to its corrections director, is a different class of prisons. Since 1996, the Palmetto state has depended on federal funds to build three new Class 3, or maximum security, prisons. Jon Ozmint, the state's director of corrections since January, says money is no longer available and South Carolina doesn't need any more Class 3 prisons. 'We're in good shape on the maximum security side,' Mr. Ozmint said. 'What we need is another level of prison to take our bad apples and separate them from the general population.' Mr. Ozmint envisions what he calls a Class 5 prison - a super-maximum-security facility for the really hard cases. 'We need a separate facility where people don't want to go,' he said. At the Perry Correctional Institute in Pelzer, the place people don't want to go is the pair of 48-cell Special Management Units - where inmates are locked up 23 hours a day and taken to a row of cages on a concrete pad for their daily hour of exercise. At the SMU, as it's called, inmates shout at media guests and complain about the stifling heat. 'Y'all need to get some damn air conditioning up in here!' one inmate yells. Though the double-door cells have vented windows that allow in fresh air, the exterior solid cell doors that face the hall are opened only when the inside temperature reaches 95 degrees. It's the sort of place repeat disciplinary offenders are sent. Mr. Ozmint says he would like to ship them all off to one special prison modeled after the federal supermax plan - where nearly all functions, from showers to exercise, are controlled by remote turnkeys and monitored with cameras. Ernest C. Weber, a New York corrections consultant and expert on jails and prisons, agrees in general with Mr. Ozmint's idea, saying there is a place for supermax facilities in state prison systems. 'There will be that certain percentage of incorrigible individuals that every time they step outside they're going to try to hurt somebody,' Mr. Weber said. Mr. Ozmint says the South Carolina system has enough bed space to last the next year to two years. After then, 'we need to start breaking ground on new prisons,' he said. He estimates a conservative price tag of $30 million for a medium-size facility. Now that Uncle Sam can't foot the bill, 'the state is going to have to incur some bond indebtedness to build new prisons,' Mr. Ozmint says. 'If the Legislature doesn't do it, the federal courts will.' |
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