Seven inmates were killed and many others wounded as inmates fought each other in the Lee Correctional Facility in SC. The response time was governed by the fact that the unarmed guards basically stayed out for their own safety–at least one of the prime decisions–and called in state SWAT.
The cite says that all guards are unarmed in SC, even in this maximum-security prison. Which stuns me. I presume each state has its own laws, but how widespread is that?
I’m not really opening up in this query about tactics of armed guards one way or another during a prison riot.
In the general population, any guard would be heavily outnumbered and it would be easy to jump them and steal their weapon. I would hope where lethal force is called for, the weapons would be locked up well away from the inmates until a trained riot force could be assembled en masse to enforce order.
After all, the reason a lot of (insert minority here) get shot by police is “I thought he had a gun!” Theoretically that excuse is not valid inside a prison, so why would a prison guard need a gun? How much daily discipline needs “stop that or I’ll shoot”? Plus, it’s not like inmates can “run away” and not be found.
The only reason a guard might need firepower is if he’s being seriously threatened by one or more physically superior inmates. In that case, why add “get the gun” to the incentives?
The ones roaming around within reach of the inmates are unarmed. The ones up on the wall or in a guard towerkeeping watch are armed. If you have no walls…
There is armed surveillance at every outdoor activity?
ETA: Then there is no automatic requirement for a license/authorization to prison guards–who therefore occupy some sort of obscure occupation of LEO? (Relates to a previous thread not especially on semantics of “LEO” but on the general training and licensing.)
Generally at large facilities, no one including guards and police are allowed to carry guns into the inmate areas of the facility except in an emergency. There will be armed guards at entrances, gates, etc, but there’s always on the other side of a major barrier (tower, barbed wire, heavy door) from where there are multiple inmates wandering around. You can see reference to this in movies and talk shows where a cop will check his gun before going into a jail cell to interrogate a subject. I’m not an expert on it, but that’s the way every prison or major jail I’ve ever read about or talked to anyone about.
Some prison guards are LEOs with full arrest powers, I believe this is the case for the Feds and a number of states. From a quick google SC prison guards are not LEOs, but do have a screening and certification process to go through before being qualified. Prison guards in SC are also specifically exempted from the general laws about carrying weapons into particular areas when they are engaged in their duties.
COs in my state are peace officers which means that they are legally authorized to carry firearms and mandated to complete the necessary training. But that doesn’t mean every post is armed - usually the entrances/gates have an armed CO and if an inmate is hospitalized in an outside hospital, he or she will be guarded by armed COs. They all ( at least in my state ) have to be qualified to carry a firearm though, because the CO in the housing unit today may be the one on hospital watch tomorrow.
Also, the SWAT team referred to in the article seems to be a part of the same agency that runs the prisons, as Stirling ( the prison chief) is quoted as saying “We gathered as many people as we could, as quickly as we could and went in as soon as we thought it was safe for our staff” It’s not at all uncommon for a jail or prison system to have it’s own equivalent of a SWAT team."
A few years back during the worst of the recession a cousin of mine (with no law enforcement whatsoever) who was desperate for a job applied for work as a prison guard in SC, and could potentially have had the job. Cousin ended up not going through with trying for the job though–it was low paying, dangerous, and applicants were warned to expect to have various bodily fluids thrown on them on a regular basis. (A different cousin at an earlier time spent a year or two in the prison where this riot happened after he lost his job as a chemist and Broke Bad. Really.)
In reference to guards having guns. The usual refrain we hear about the reason police in the public domain, not as guards, use their weapons (and logically therefor must have weapons) is that they only use the weapon to prevent harm to themselves or others. Just fleeing arrest is not supposed by itself to justify shooting someone. Apologies if that belief is wrong somewhere in the US, I think it is a general rule. Of course, if the police thinks that the fleeing person might be armed and intent on hurting someone-a judgement call-then that changes the equation and force may be justified. Well, why are prison guards who are safe in a tower armed? Isn’t it highly likely that even an escaping prisoner is unarmed? Not all prisoners have a history of violence. What gives the guard the right to shoot someone just for fleeing? I understand the goal of deference, but shooting someone in the hope that others will think twice sounds extreme. Yet Guard towers in the movies always have guards with appropriately big guns. So, what makes the fleeing prison inmate different from a fleeing traffic speeder or mugger?
I understand that inmates are convicted criminals and are breaking the law by fleeing. Got that. I am just curious about why force can by default be used in those circumstances.
Also, is it a fact that anyone fleeing a prison will be shot? Might it be the case that the guns are there for self-defense and not to stop jailbreaks? I am curious.
The short answer is that the law gives guards the right to shoot an escaping prisoner. The law generally says that an officer can shoot somebody to prevent that person from committing a serious crime. And, by definition, anyone who is escaping from a prison is in the middle of committing a serious crime.
Obviously, there are other factors like appropriate response. You can’t shoot an escaping prisoner unless there are no other apparent reasonable means to prevent the escape. And this law only applies to people escaping from prison; different laws apply to people escaping from a jail.
I will point out that guard towers aren’t generally there for preventing escapes. Most guard towers are intended to prevent inmate-on-inmate or inmate-on-employee violence. Offhand, I would say that 99% of the time when a tower guard fires a weapon, it’s to stop an inmate who’s trying to kill somebody not an inmate who’s trying to escape.
New York hasn’t let the police handle these situations since the Attica riot (which, as you may have heard, did not go well). The prison system now has its own response units, which are called CERT (Correction Emergency Response Team). CERT officers are trained on riot control without using firearms.