Officers want more Supermax staffing

Union official says that prison riot is a matter of time

Deborah Frazier, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, May 18, 2006

The federal "Supermax" prison in Florence is dangerously understaffed, the correctional officers' union said Wednesday, leading to increasing violence that officers fear could get much worse.

"They have cut the staffing budget so short that it's just a matter of time before we have a riot," said Mike Schnobrich, of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals.

A closed-door arbitration hearing is set for today at the federal Administrative Maximum Facility, or ADX, in Florence on a union grievance over the staffing, he said.

The Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman for ADX declined to return telephone calls seeking comment on the allegations.

Nicole English, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons north central region, said that all 19 federal prisons in her region are staffed at safe levels.

"There hasn't been any loss of staff," English said. "Inmate and staff safety are our number one concern."

Bob Snelson, a union leader at ADX, said that staffing levels have fallen by 20 percent to 30 percent in six years because of federal budget cuts.

ADX, popularly known as Supermax because it operates under the highest level of security and houses 400 of the most dangerous inmates in the federal prison system, opened in 1994.

Its inmates include 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and white supremacist Matthew Hale.

ADX is a "control unit prison" where inmates are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. Federal law requires that inmates have one hour of exercise a day alone in a separate concrete chamber.

Snelson and Schnobrich said that staffing cutbacks mean inmates have received only one hour of exercise a week, or less, and that inmate frustration has increased attacks on officers.

"Most of our inmates are very violent. They have short fuses. We are dealing with people who can go from reading the Bible to trying to kill you," Snelson said.

An inmate armed with a papier- mache spear attacked a corrections counselor last year and nearly cut out his eye, Schnobrich said.

Other officers have been pelted with urine and feces, union officials said.

Threats of violence or murder against correctional officers at ADX doubled from 55 in 2004 to 110 in 2005, Snelson said.

"When they are supposed to get an hour of recreation a day and they get none for weeks or they can't make a phone call for weeks, they go into a killing fury," Snelson said.

The staffing shortage has become so severe that control units overseeing several inmates in separate cells regularly have no officer on duty for eight hours or more, union officials said.

"Those units should not go unmanned at all," said state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West. She will testify at the arbitration hearing.

"At the rate we are going, we are not going to maintain public safety," she said. "What if the friends of the World Trade Tower terrorists come to get their friends?

"The Florence police and the Fremont County Sheriff's Department can't handle a terrorist attack. Fort Carson couldn't respond. The soldiers are in Iraq."

McFadyen said there were no murders at ADX for 11 years after the facility opened, but when staffing levels were decreased after February 2005, there were two inmate murders within two months. "We aren't asking for extras," she said. "We're asking for reasonableness."

McFadyen and the union representatives blamed the Bush administration's budget cuts, which gave the federal bureau of prisons few alternatives to leaving positions vacant.

"I don't want to be talking about this after someone is already dead and the politicians are saying why did this happen," Schnobrich said.

Bryan Lowry, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, which represents 40,000 correctional officers, said that federal facilities across the country were understaffed.

"Staffing levels were increased in the 1980s after riots. That's changed," he said. "You can't staff at under 93 percent and keep prisons at a safe level."

frazierd@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5308