Area : AEN NEWS
Date : 10-21-95  22:02
From : alt@iquest.net
  To : All
Subj : Prisons tighten security after uprisings

From: "Al Thompson" 
Originally to: news@aen.org
Organization: American Justice Federation
Original Date: Sat, 21 Oct 95 21:43:46 -0500

 Prisons tighten security after uprisings
 ----------------------------------------

 (c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co.
 (c) 1995 N.Y. Times News Service

 WASHINGTON (Oct 21, 1995 - 18:18 EDT) -- The federal
authorities confined thousands of inmates to their cells
at the country's 70 low-, medium- and high-security penal
institutions Saturday after prisoner uprisings at four
institutions in different states left dozens of inmates
and staff members hurt and caused millions of dollars in
property damage, government officials said Saturday.

 The uprisings at institutions in Alabama, Illinois,
Pennsylvania and Tennessee were the most extensive in the
federal system in years. Inmates set fire to mattresses,
broke windows, threw chairs and hurled baseball bats in
outbursts that seemed to ignite spontaneously at each of
the four institutions.

 Law-enforcement officials said Saturday they had not
found evidence that the disturbances were planned or
coordinated, but they also said some inmates might have
been inspired by news reports about incidents at other
institutions.

 Administration officials said Saturday that the latest
violence appeared to be linked to the 332-to-83 vote in
the House on Wednesday night rejecting a proposal by the
Federal Sentencing Commission to erase the 100-to-1
sentencing disparity between possession of cocaine powder
and crack cocaine.

 In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said that it
ordered on Friday night tighter security at all but its
14 minimum-security institutions. The order means that
prisoners, many of whom are allowed to leave their cells
during the day, would be confined under guard.

 The prison authorities said they had restored order at
the four institutions and that no one had been killed or
had escaped. But the officials appeared to be girding for
the possibility of further unrest and said the harsher
security would remain in effect for a indefinite period.

 "Until this period of unrest has been resolved, this
precaution was believed to be necessary in the interest of
public safety, and to insure the safety of staff and inmates,"
the statement by the Bureau of Prisons said.

 Other law-enforcement officials said Saturday that they did
not know precisely what had caused the disturbance, which
began on Thursday with a cafeteria fight among some of the
1,099 inmates at the Talledega federal prison in Alabama. In
1991, Cuban inmates at the institution facing deportation
seized prison employees who were later rescued by federal
agents in a daring raid.

 Administration officials said the debate and vote on
the disparity of sentences for the possession of cocaine in
powder and crack forms had ratcheted up tensions in the prison,
even though it would not have affected the sentences of
inmates at the prisons. If the House had not overturned the
sentencing commission's recommendation, the two forms of
cocaine posession would have received equal sentences
beginning on Wednesday.

 The issue gained broad national attention when it was
addressed by speakers at Monday's Million Man March,
including Louis Farrakhan, the rally organizer and the Rev.
Jesse Jackson who expressed rage over how the federal drug
laws disproportionately affected young black men. It was
unclear Saturday whether inmates at the institutions were
able see the live television broadcast of the rally.

 At present, people convicted of possessing five grams of
crack cocaine, the crystalline form that has ravaged
black inner-city ghettoes, are punished with a minimum
mandatory sentence of five years. But powdered cocaine, a
form more typically used by affluent white abusers, has no
such minimum and a person must possess 500 grams before
the five-year mandatory sentence is imposed.

 Law-enforcement officials said Saturday the bitterness
over the disparate cocaine sentences is an incendiary and
racially polarizing issue in the congested prison system
with its 90,000 inmates.

 Although they did not expect a reaction to this week's
congressional vote, officials expressed little surprise
at the sharp and sudden violence of multiple uprisings.
Earlier this week prison authorities held an unpublicized
training exercise that was a dress rehearal for a prison
uprising at an abandoned prison in West Virginia.

 Reports from the prisons hinted at a day and night of
violence and fear. At the Greenville Correctional
Institution in Illinois, order was not restored until the
predawn hours Saturday after a disturbance erupted on
Friday afternoon at the prison which houses 1,062 inmates.
Some news reports suggested that the unrest there might
have been provoked by guards trying to confine inmates in
their cells after trouble at other prisons.

 The Associated Press reported that guards and SWAT teams
were summoned to rescue a group of prison employees who
had barricaded themselves inside the prison fearing
attack by inmates. During the disturbance, 10 staff
members and unknown number of inmates were injured,
mainly suffering cuts and bruises.

 In Memphis, Reuters New Service reported that
firefighters were unable to extinguish fires in three
housing units of the prison there until early Saturday.
The prison houses 903 inmates and the news service said
that about 50 guards and prisoners were treated for
smoke inhalation and it quoted fire officials saying
that repairs could cost $5 million.

 At the Allenwood prison in Pennsylvania, about 150 of
its 1,243 inmates went on an hourlong rampage Friday in
a dining hall of a medium-security prison, pulling fire
alarms and breaking windows, the prison said in a
statement. One staff member was burned when a hot liquid
was thrown in her face.

 With the lock down still in effect, the disturbances
seemed likely to renew the festering debate over cocaine
penalties. Civil rights groups have long railed at the
100-to-1 disparity in sentences for crack and powder
cocaine saying it is main reason that young black men
are pouring into the federal prison system many long
sentences that not infrequently stretch into decades
because laws applied in conjunction with mandatory
minimums like those require longer person terms for
people convicted of carrying a firearm.

 The Clinton Justice Department has favored heavier
penalties for crack than powder on grounds that it
causes greater social damage than powder cocaine,
but Justice officials have said they would also accept
an adjustment to narrow the existing the differences,
which they acknowledge may be too wide.

 Justice Department studies indicate that nearly
two-thirds of the inmates in federal prisons are serving
sentences for drug crimes, with most studies showing
blacks on average serve longer sentences than whites.

 The harshness of the congressional debate over the
proposal to equalize sentences for crack and powder
cocaine centered on the impact of the current law
on blacks, and the timing of the vote, just two days
after the march, brought passions to the House floor.
Rep. Maxine Waters, a D-Calif., said "This is a
fairness issue and whether you like it or not it's a
race issue."


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