Embattled facility again is 'at a breaking point'
Embattled facility again is 'at a breaking point'
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By Josh Rabe
Published: February 2, 2008
McALESTER — As a child, Terry Crenshaw watched tanks roll down the streets of his hometown as smoke billowed from the ruins of the state's largest maximum-security prison.
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Humble beginnings
Oklahoma State Penitentiary opened in 1908 when a train unloaded the state's first 50 inmates in McAlester. The inmates built their own temporary stockade under the supervision of guards.
That humble beginning started a century of state prison growth that has largely consisted of cheap inmate labor, commandeering of buildings that were never designed to be prisons and remodeling aging buildings to accommodate an ever-increasing inmate population.
Time has taken a toll on Big Mac, which for years has been a sort of fall-back solution for the growing inmate population.
"The Band-Aid approach we've taken over the years has mushroomed into a major, major problem,” Crenshaw said. "It is literally falling apart.”
Prison officials in September proposed adding 1,500 beds to the prison, which makes up the biggest chunk of a $300 million bond request being sought by the agency.
According to MGT America, which specializes in corrections systems audits, that may not be wise. Expansion was not among the firm's 141 recommendations.
Bad first impression
"They said, ‘You should keep H unit and demolish everything else,'” said Justin Jones, director of the state Corrections Department.
H unit, or death row, is the only modern building on the prison's campus. It was built in 1991.
Auditors hired by the state Legislature to look at the state's prison system called Oklahoma's prison infrastructure the worst they'd ever seen and pointed to the state penitentiary, Big Mac, as only the most obvious example.
The auditor's recommendations say the state should not build additional housing units at the McAlester prison.
"Any further expansion will only place more strain on an aging infrastructure that is operating well beyond designed capacity,” the audit states.
Riot effects linger
Behind the walls of the penitentiary, two vacant buildings still stand despite being abandoned a quarter-century ago.
The prison riot of 1973 left the buildings uninhabitable, but no effort has been made to demolish them, and no new buildings have been added to replace them. Prison officials even used one of the condemned buildings for a short period in the mid-1990s for overflow despite a federal judge's order prohibiting its use.
Prison employees had to remove all the plumbing from decaying buildings to assure a federal judge that they would never again be used to house inmates. However, that doesn't mean the decaying structures aren't still an integral part of the prison.
A guard inside the main rotunda of the original 1935 structure controls movement of prisoners and correctional officers between the main administration area and other occupied cell spaces.
Every day, officers pass through the building, where black mold, water damage and decades of peeling paint are visible.
Crenshaw said he has no idea if the falling paint chips contain lead-based paint, whether the cracking floors and brick walls contain asbestos or if any of the outcroppings of mold are potentially toxic. None of it has ever been tested.
Rodents and stray cats litter the prison, and the number of pigeons could rival the inmate population.
Repair needs evident
F Unit is the only part of the original structure that still houses inmates. It doesn't have heat or air conditioning, and a series of pipes hang haphazardly from the ceiling to provide a sprinkler system. The pipes, which are easily within reach by hand, also offer inmates a quick opportunity to make a crude weapon.
A few rooms have makeshift heat in the dead of winter, and employees put Plexiglas over some of the barred windows to keep the wind down, but most of it is now broken. One window is patched with a rotting piece of plywood tied in place with plastic, old push brooms and chairs propped against it to keep it in place.
There probably isn't a single roof in the McAlester prison that doesn't leak, Crenshaw said.
Inmates in the older wings of the prison have been known to protest by flushing all the toilets simultaneously, said Eddie Garvin, a correctional officer at the prison. When they do, it floods a former 1938 prison infirmary known as I Unit, leaving the inmates it now houses ankle-deep in raw sewage.
I Unit floods constantly, Garvin said, gesturing to a sandbag at the top of a staircase that acts as a sort of crude flood control.
Staff in short supply
Five officers are needed to guard I Unit, Garvin said. "Today we have two. If we screamed for help right now, it would probably be five minutes before anyone could get here.”
At the McAlester prison, security is especially important given the violent nature of the inmates behind its walls. The most common offense among prisoners at McAlester is murder.
In the past 10 years, staffing at the prison has dropped dramatically. At least one tower that was meant to hold an armed guard has been boarded up, and other security posts thought to be critical now sit vacant due to staff shortages, Crenshaw said.
"Is this a secure and safe facility?” Crenshaw said. "Yes, but only because we make it that way.”
Corrections Department funding is expected to be a major consideration by the Legislature, which goes into session Monday.
Related Topics:
Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Prisons
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But the DOC is no different than any other state agency.