Druce entered Geoghan's cell just before noon, Brouillette said, when the prisoners left their one-person concrete cells to return their lunch trays. The solid cell door has a chest-high window that guards can look through as they pass by. When the officer on duty heard noises coming from Geoghan's cell but could not open the cell door from the control panel at his station, other officers were summoned by walkie-talkie. It took several of them to pry open the door.
One corrections officer for 23 inmates in protective custody in a maximum security prison at the time they are scheduled to leave their cells to return their lunch trays? Why aren't their trays passed directly into their cells and placed outside the same way when they are done?
The only excuse provided so far is a lame one, even though it's probably true. Robert Brouillette, an executive of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, told the Post today,
....the incident "should wake some people up about what we've been saying for years. There are not enough correction officers. The prisoners know the schedule well, they know when only one guy is on duty and they can take advantage of it."
We know from our own conversations with prison guards that they feel at risk. During the height of the crack cocaine life sentences being handed out in the 90's, one official in the prison guard union told us that if we keep sentencing this way, there won't be any guards. None will take the risk. We put 20 year olds in jail for life for non-violent crack cocaine offenses and then we withhold the carrots from them--the carrots being any hope they will get out early or even vocational training and educational and recreational opportunities. They have nothing left to lose.
Maybe if we stopped using our prisons to warehouse non-violent offenders who at least at the onset of their sentences are able to be rehabilitated, we would be able to afford staff to guard those who truly need to be locked up.
"When you have someone in prison who is as infamous as John Geoghan, it's absolutely predictable that people will prey upon him, and it's the Department of Correction's job to keep him safe," said Leslie Walker, a lawyer and the executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, a private nonprofit group that provides legal services for indigent prisoners. Geoghan was one of her clients. "They failed miserably. He was a frail old man, and he should have been kept safe."
We agree. We have been shocked by this senseless murder since yesterday. It was avoidable. Prison understaffing is not an excuse--not for a protective custody unit. Let the non-violent offenders out--so there is money available to adequately staff our prisons and keep the guards, inmates and staff safe behind the walls.
The Denver Post began an excellent series on prison overcrowding today. Our jails have become crowded powder kegs.
Jail crowding is a problem for many areas of the country, national experts say. Cuts in aid for the mentally ill, prisons full of offenders serving longer sentences due to mandatory sentencing laws, stiffer penalties for domestic violence and drunken driving and rocketing use of methamphetamine are commonly blamed for crowding, says Steve Ingley, executive director of the American Jail Association.....even rehabilitative and alternative sentencing programs such as work release, house arrest and electronic monitoring can't hold back the flood.
Unlike prisons, jails hold those who are awaiting trial and who are still presumed innocent.
"You're supposed to be as safe in jail as you are in your living room," says John Simonet, former director of the Denver County Jail.
America cannot jail itself out of its criminal justice problem. You might not care about John Geoghan, but how will you feel when it's your neighbor or 18 year old child who's been brutally killed or raped during a one night stay in an over-crowded county jail for a d.u.i. offense -- it happens, and it can happen to you and those you care about. This is a problem for all of us. We suggest the next time you hear a politician promising to increase jail sentences, promise yourself that when you get to the voting booth you will pull the lever for his or her opponent.
