Wednesday, August 28, 1996

Inmates Involved in Texas Prison Protest

By Associated Press

SPUR, Texas (AP) - Montana and Hawaii inmates held at a private prison here were confined to their cells today, one day after one of the prisoners was injured in a disturbance in which shots were fired.

A Montana inmate was hurt after Dickens County Correctional Center guards resorted to live ammunition to scare prisoners back following a near-revolt, said Terry Pelz, director of prison operations.

"We don't know how he was injured," Pelz said Tuesday. Earlier, a Hawaii official had said the convict had been shot in the shoulder.

Pelz added that the inmate was back in his cell Tuesday morning after a trip to an emergency room in Lubbock, about 50 miles west of sparsely populated Dickens County.

He described the morning mood as "joyful."

No island inmates were injured during the uprising at Dickens County Correctional Center, said Ted Sakai, corrections division chief for the Hawaii Department of Public Safety.

About 120 inmates from Hawaii and Montana staged a two-hour sit-down in the recreation yard of the prison where they were held after reportedly protesting conditions there, Sakai said.

Both Montana and Hawaii contract out inmates to ease overcrowding.

Sakai said Warden George Fry told him the incident started when the inmates continued to mill about unsupervised in the recreation yard in violation of prison policy.

They refused to return to their cells, and officials called in sheriff's deputies and state police to assist the prison security staff.

Inmates complained about the prison's strip-search policy for inmates who do community service work outside the prison. Fry told Sakai he started the searches last week to cut down on drugs being smuggled into the jail.

Inmates also complained about small food portions, wages for prison work that at one time were as low as 16 cents an hour and what they call a lack of access to medical specialists.

After repeated warnings and the firing of rubber bullets, guards began firing live rounds of ammunition.

"We had to push them back into the general yard, so we fired some rubber bullets, and they just laughed at that," said Pelz. "Then we fired over their heads, and they still didn't move. Then we fired into the ground in front of them, and they started moving back."

The Texas Jail Commission has oversight responsibility and will receive a report this week from the prison, as will officials from the contracting states.