{"id":291812,"date":"2021-08-30T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T10:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=367890"},"modified":"2021-08-30T10:00:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T10:00:04","slug":"the-georgia-prison-guard-shortage-is-killing-incarcerated-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/08\/30\/the-georgia-prison-guard-shortage-is-killing-incarcerated-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The Georgia Prison Guard Shortage Is Killing Incarcerated People"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dontavius Mint’s mother<\/u>\u00a0says her son had been dead in his cell for days when the smell finally attracted attention. Guards at Ware State Prison in Georgia are supposed to check on\u00a0people in the hole regularly. Of course, they\u2019re supposed to be doing a lot of things they\u2019re not doing right now.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the message Mintz had been trying to tell people outside prison. Mintz, a 24-year-old serving a life sentence, had been working with a\u00a0prison reform activist group, the Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia. In letters and phone calls, Mintz had described the deteriorating condition of the South Georgia penitentiary, the shortage of guards, the increasingly inedible food, the extreme restriction on movement, and more, said Brian Randolph, a spokesperson for the coalition.<\/p>\n

And then\u00a0Mintz turned up dead last week.<\/p>\n

His mother, Nerissa Wright, said\u00a0people incarcerated\u00a0at the prison\u00a0first told her that Mintz was found face down, blood coming from his mouth and nose. A few hours later, she said, prison staff called with the same message but added that the cause of his death was undetermined and that it\u00a0would\u00a0take weeks for a toxicology screen\u00a0to come\u00a0back and a cause ruling made. No explanation was made to Wright of the staffing shortfall that would have left her son unmonitored for days at a time, she said.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201c[The warden] said he didn\u2019t have much information for me and that I can call the coroner,\u201d said Wright. (A spokesperson for the Georgia\u00a0Department of Corrections told The Intercept\u00a0in a statement, “While details of the death are still under investigation, documents show that rounds were being made.”)<\/p>\n

What is clear is that the prison system in Georgia is broken, even by our country\u2019s benighted standards. According to figures from Randolph, as of August 22, 19 people have been killed in a Georgia state prison this year. The cause of another 24 deaths remains undetermined, but undetermined deaths are almost always classified later as homicides, said Randolph. \u201cThere\u2019s going have to be some type of federal intervention. No one is willing to fix it. And I\u2019m starting to wonder if, you know, they threw their hands up in the air and just said, ‘Maybe somebody can take it over and fix it,’\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 2017, the Georgia Department of Corrections reported four homicides. Last year, it reported 26.<\/p>\n\n

Fewer guards make it harder to monitor interpersonal problems between\u00a0people in prison \u2014 and more dangerous to step in. Those conditions lead to stabbings like one captured on video by people imprisoned at Ware State Prison earlier this year, in which a hooting and chanting group ganged up on an incarcerated person\u00a0for a merciless beating.<\/p>\n

Without staff to watch incarcerated people, the imprisoned are oftentimes warehoused in their cells for weeks at a time. This approach is turning Georgia\u2019s prisons into a murder factory.<\/p>\n

Guarding the imprisoned<\/u> wasn\u2019t a particularly attractive job before the pandemic. Broad labor shortages have turned the $16.50\u00a0per hour starting wages for a Georgia correctional officer into a 44 percent turnover rate with hundreds of unfilled jobs. As some guards leave, others look at the conditions\u00a0\u2014 and the risks\u00a0\u2014 and leave as well, creating a cascade of attrition. Prisons across the state are operating with as little as one-quarter of the necessary staffing now. In some cases, a single guard might be left to watch dozens of people.<\/p>\n

On August 11, the one-year anniversary of Ware State Prison\u2019s last riot, a dispute over food led to two correctional officers being stabbed by a person incarcerated at the prison. One of the guards, Julian Rector, remains in a coma.<\/p>\n

That same day, Jamari Charell McClinton, an\u00a0incarcerated person from Decatur, had been knifed to death by another person\u00a0imprisoned at Baldwin State Prison.<\/p>\n

After the Baldwin State murder, police and correctional department staff interrogated people held at the prison. One of them apparently described the assault and named the perpetrators. Afterward, rather than segregate that person, he was returned to a shared cell.<\/p>\n

That witness, Badarius Clark, was murdered last week. Police arrested his cellmate for the crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t put him in any type of protective custody or anything by itself. You put him in a room with a roommate,\u201d said Randolph of the Human and Civil Rights Coalition. \u201cYou know, like, at this point … it\u2019s starting to look is the negligence is just intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point … it\u2019s starting to look is the negligence is just intentional.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n

The federal prison system is not faring\u00a0much better in Georgia. Administrators emptied Atlanta\u2019s federal penitentiary a few weeks ago after an internal investigation revealed massive corruption within the ranks.<\/p>\n

But the Georgia Department of Corrections is\u00a0even more astoundingly unresponsive.\u00a0Inquiries, when answered at all, take days for terse replies. The families of those who have lost loved ones say they receive less response than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been very evasive with me,\u201d said Jennifer Bradley, whose son Carrington Frye was murdered by a cellmate last year. \u201c[Georgia Department of Corrections] Commissioner [Timothy] Ward was insensitive. He abruptly ended the call, did everything but hang up in my face. His only concern was how did I get his number.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bradley described how her son \u201clay there for 30 to 40 minutes waiting for them to get him assistance, and they didn\u2019t. They had one guard monitoring all those inmates.\u201d The cameras had been smeared with petroleum jelly, leaving the guard room blind, she said. \u201cHe was doomed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post The Georgia Prison Guard Shortage Is Killing Incarcerated People<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on The Intercept<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fewer guards make it harder to monitor interpersonal problems between people in prison \u2014 and more dangerous for those who do step in.<\/p>\n

The post The Georgia Prison Guard Shortage Is Killing Incarcerated People<\/a> appeared first on The Intercept<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291812"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292453,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291812\/revisions\/292453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}