Staffing shortages, violence & killings plague Oklahoma prisons
#1

By SEAN MURPHY
yesterday


HOLDENVILLE, Okla. (AP) — Working as a prison guard in Oklahoma is becoming an ever more dangerous job as the state, with one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States, struggles with violence and understaffing at detention facilities. Long hours, dangerous conditions and remote, rural locations have meant fewer guards and a system plagued with increased killings and violence.

Three inmates were killed in separate incidents this year at the same private prison in rural, east-central Oklahoma where a correctional officer was fatally stabbed by an inmate over the summer

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Davis Correctional Facility, a 1,700-bed men’s prison in Holdenville operated by Tennessee-based private prison operator CoreCivic, has been operating at only about 70% of its contractually obligated staffing level

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CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, has a long history of problems with inmate violence at its prisons. In one of the deadliest prison attacks in Oklahoma history, four inmates were stabbed to death in 2015 at a prison operated by CCA. Those attacks followed a violent outburst a few months earlier in which some 200 to 300 of the prison’s roughly 1,600 inmates were involved in a brawl that resulted in 11 prisoners being taken to the hospital.

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Private facilities are not alone in their struggle to decrease violence and hire and retain staff. Oklahoma has long had one of the highest average annual homicide rates among all the state prison systems in the country from 2001 to 2019, with 14 homicides per 100,000 inmates during that time. South Carolina topped it only slightly with 15 homicides per 100,000 inmates


https://apnews.com/article/prisons-viole...d20d4a0ff1
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