‘They did nothing’: Warnings were there before 7 died at SC prison, former admin says
In the weeks before a riot killed seven inmates at South Carolina’s Lee Correctional Institution, staff members warned wardens and others that more and more inmates were armed, the former deputy director of the state’s Department of Corrections said.
But the higher-ups at Lee Correctional didn’t listen, said Michael McCall, a 33-year employee of the department who retired as the department’s deputy director of operations in March.
“Nothing was being done, and I can tell you it was never reported to me or my staff or my regional directors,” said McCall, who regularly met with wardens and monitored activity at prisons across the state. “...Whenever they heard from the employees that these inmates were making tons of shanks, that should have been a red flag.”
That was just one of the many warning signs — some ignored by officials at almost every level at the Department of Corrections — ahead of the April 15 massacre, McCall said.
He said conditions in many South Carolina prisons remain dangerous, and he worries about more violence, possibly directed at staff members.
Officials at the Department of Corrections declined to answer The State’s questions for this story. Spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said prisons director Bryan Stirling cannot comment on the specifics of the recently completed investigation in to the Lee riot and that the case has been sent to the local solicitor for prosecution.
The Third Circuit Solicitor’s office could not be reached for comment.
McCall said he retired after Stirling asked him to leave even though Stirling did not fault his job performance. Shain did not elaborate on the reason for his retirement.
McCall said aggravating factors that contributed to the riot originated from the transfer of several problem inmates to Lee Correctional, which was at the time considered one of the most secure prisons in the state.
For months, leaders at the Department of Corrections battled issue after issue at the maximum-security McCormick Correctional Institution, including an escape and an incident in which inmates made their way onto the roof of the facility.
As conditions deteriorated, upper-level staff at the prison began leaving the department, and on one occasion, only two correctional officers reported to work at the facility housing about 1,200 inmates, McCall said. On average, nine correctional officers were coming to work each day, he added.
“I knew I had to do something at McCormick or I was going to lose it,” the former prison official said.
In the fall 2017, Lee Correctional Institution had a unit that was only housing 60 inmates, and after they were moved to Turbeville Correctional Institution to make room for transfers, it was an ideal space to move the unruly prisoners, McCall said. At the time, Lee had far more staff than McCormick, though the prison was still deemed to be operating at “extremely deficient levels,” according to a report given to the department the month before the riot.
One other prison official has also alleged that the transfer of inmates from McCormick exacerbated an already tense situation at Lee Correctional. In a lawsuit against the department, Aaron Joyner, the warden at Lee Correctional during the riot, claimed he warned officials against the move and told them of the “dire consequences that might occur.”
Joyner retired from the department after he was removed from Lee Correctional and asked to be warden at Kershaw Correctional Institution, a medium-security facility located in Kershaw, according to his lawsuit.
Joyner was the first department official to break with Stirling and S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster on the cause of the riot. In the days after, the director and governor held a press conference to state the riot was over cellphones and territory.
Stirling acknowledged in a previous interview with the state that the department moved unruly inmates because of “issues at McCormick Correctional,” but would not comment on whether the inmates themselves were involved in the skirmish.
Neither Joyner nor his lawyers in the case could not be reached for comment.
After the transfer, things seem to run relatively smoothly, but in January 2018, department administrators began receiving reports of inmates pushing cell doors off of their tracks in the F-5 unit, allowing themselves to walk free whenever they wanted, McCall said.
Stirling, the Department of Corrections director, acknowledged during an April tour of Lee Correctional that the cell doors in F-5 could be “easily defeated.” The outdated, air-powered system allowed inmates to push cell doors open or break them by stuffing items in the tracks. Since then, the department has replaced the doors in the F-5 unit at a cost of $1 million, Stirling said.
McCall maintained the doors, which were installed in the late 90’s when the F-5 unit was built, never worked.
“I was the warden at Lee, and I tried to get the doors fixed then. They never, ever worked. We put inmates in there and they got out,” McCall said.
Other dorms at Lee Correctional were built in a different era and do not use the same locking mechanism.
McCall ordered that the troublesome inmates be removed from the F-5 unit and be put in a unit with working locks. He suggested the prison’s character-based unit be moved into the F-5 dorm until locks could be fixed, but the transfer never happened, he said.
Months later, the F-5 unit was one of the three embroiled in the riot and four inmates died there.
While the department could not have saved inmates in all the dorms, if inmates had been securely locked in the F-5 unit, four of the seven dead would still be alive, McCall said.
McCall said prison officials could have taken extra steps to protect the life of one person killed in the riot. Correctional staff knew there was a hit out on an inmate — Raymond Scott, 28, who was known to keep the peace on the prison yard — and did nothing to move him out of harm’s way, McCall said.
“This is failure on the warden and his staff,” McCall said. “They did nothing.”
In the months after the riot, several agencies moved in to investigate or audit what happened at the maximum-security prison. The Association of State Correctional Administrators put together a group of prison department heads from across the country to review the incident and make recommendations for improvements.
The group spent three days on its audit, McCall said, and based all of its evidence on things they heard from staff members.
“I was able to debunk every single thing and show documents against everything in that audit,” McCall said.
For example, the association claimed one issue at Lee Correctional was that staff members were not told if inmates were involved in illicit groups inside the prison that could pose a threat to security, according to a copy of their audit. McCall asserted that the staff was given that information, and, according to Department of Corrections documents, officials keep multiple documents related to illicit group involvement and status.
Additionally, the association report also claimed the warden at Lee Correctional asked that several inmates from McCormick Correctional not be transferred to his prison, but never received a response from Department of Correctional administrators. But, McCall and administrators removed 150 of 250 inmates from the list of transfers after hearing from the warden, according to internal memos from the Department of Corrections.
Still, the audit was never corrected.
Officials at the Association of State Correctional Administrators declined to comment for this story.
Although inmates flagged by the Lee warden were not transferred, many of those who were were still dangerous, McCall said.
The incident was also investigated by the Department of Corrections Police Services unit and the State Law Enforcement Division. The State requested a copy of the State Law Enforcement Division’s findings, but was denied by both the division and the Department of Corrections. The Corrections Department sited exemptions for ongoing investigations.
The findings of Police Service’s investigation were turned over to the local solicitor’s office in early April, almost a year after the incident. It is still unclear what investigators found as the findings are not yet public. The solicitor could not be reached for comment.
McCall worries that South Carolina’s prisons are vulnerable to another incident like the Lee riot, one that may claim the lives of both staff and inmates.
“All we did is spread them out all over the place. They haven’t forgotten,” McCall said. “And what I believe is they’re sleeping and waiting for an opportunity that’s going to happen.”
And South Carolina’s prisons are not prepared to handle another large-scale riot, he said. Eleven of the state’s 21 facilities are in “extreme crisis” because of staffing shortages, McCall said. His accusations are backed up by a state-funded report, which examined 13 S.C. prisons and recommended hiring at least 2,000 more security staff.
“You can’t provide what is needed for the inmates. You can’t provide security for the institution,” McCall said. “You can’t do cell inspections. And then you’re locking down inmates.”
The former deputy director said the constant lockdowns, which affected several of South Carolina’s prisons during much of the last year, exacerbated tensions. Inmates claimed they went weeks without showers, got almost no recreation time and were kept from going to educational or vocational classes while on lockdown, all while spending up to 24 hours a day locked in a cell. The department says it’s been about a month since any prison was on lockdown.
“If you don’t give them necessities — showers, (recreation), education — its going to happen, and it’s going to be toward staff,” McCall said. “Somebody is going to get hurt.”
This story was originally published May 10, 2019 at 11:06 AM.
