The State Auditor General announced Thursday findings from a five year audit of State Correctional Institutions.
“There’s simply too much violence in the facilities,” Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said. “That’s number one.”
The State Correctional Institutions and one boot camp were audited from January 2015 to March 2016. In that time period, there were 4,198 incidents. Of those incidents, 979 staff members were assaulted and there were 2041 inmate fights.
Overall, inmate on staff assault rose 10%, and inmate on inmate assault rose 14%.
“Number two is, while the department is doing a good job of reporting all of these, I think that they’ve gotta do a better job to make sure all of the incidents are getting into the tracking system,” DePasquale said.
There are nearly 50,000 inmates in the state prison system and around 15,000 employees. The Department of Corrections requires all assaults be reported, but that does not always happen, and the system is not flawless.
“We have found whenever you have a piece of paper sitting around – and it’s not just corrections, it’s any agency when we’ve done this – we have pieces of paper that’s been sitting around for 30, 60, 90 days before they get into the system,” DePasquale said. “People’s memory change or they just forget. I mean, we’re all human.”
DePasquale listed a few incidents, all of which happened in 2015. Those include an inmate beating another to death, one attacking a cell mate, an attack in the recreation yard at SCI Houtzdale, and the stabbing of a corrections officer nearly a dozen times in the head and torso.
“Our guards are doing amazing work on behalf of the community at large,” DePasquale said. “We often don’t see the work they do, but it is important work and it’s really critical that we try to make the inmates at these facilities the violence reduced so when they do re-enter society, they’re better equipped to do that.”
DOC Secretary John Wetzel said there is a plan to fix things, starting with better training, additional oversight, and an automated misconduct system so it no longer relies on paper documentation.