FLORENCE, Colo.-
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales toured the federal prison holding some the nation’s most violent and disruptive inmates on Wednesday and said the facility is secure, but he conceded it could be improved.
“Are there challenges? Yes,” Gonzales said. “Can we do better? Yes.”
Gonzales agreed to visit the prison, known as Supermax, after Colorado’s two senators raised concerns about staffing and security.
He stopped short of promising to increase the number of guards or build an additional fence around the compound, as some state and local officials have advocated. Instead, he said he was willing to listen.
“The question is reaching a general consensus on what is needed,” Gonzales said. “There may be additional staffing that we can provide to the facilities here.”
Supermax, 90 miles southwest of Denver, houses 474 of the nation’s most notorious convicts, including Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph and Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
Security at the 490-bed prison, built in 1994 at a cost of $60 million, has been under scrutiny for months. Last year, an arbitrator found staffing levels had made the facility more dangerous, with some shifts going unfilled. In September, a Justice Department report criticized the prison for not properly screening mail and other communications.
The Justice Department says all mail and phone calls to and from inmates labeled as terrorists have been monitored since October, and perimeter security has been beefed up.
Sens. Wayne Allard, a Republican, and Ken Salazar, a Democrat, accompanied Gonzales on his tour, along with Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn.
“He’s been more than willing to sit down and listen to what we have to say,” Allard said. “We also understand, we’re not about to meet 100 percent of what we want to have here,” he said.
John Gage, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the problems at Supermax are present at all the nation’s more than 100 federal penitentiaries.
“We just have a bad situation going on inside our prisons,” said Gage, who came to Florence to accompany Gonzales on the tour. “We need a comprehensive look at this. Some of these management procedures have been to run the prisons really on the cheap. It’s time right now that we correct this.”
Gage said prison officers are not asking for more money but for enough officers to keep a safe grip on the facility.
The Department of Justice said 327 staffers work at Supermax and that 92 percent of the authorized positions there are filled. The ratio of inmates to staff is 1.5-to-1, the department said.
Bureau of Prisons Director Harley Lappin, who accompanied Gonzales the tour, said Supermax staffing is higher than it was five years ago.
“We believe we can safety manage this facility with the current number of inmates and the current procedures with the staffing that we have,” he said.
Barbara Batulis, a Supermax guard and president of the union local, said she was ready to impress the prison’s needs upon Gonzales.
“I will tell him whatever I have to tell him to get something done,” she said.
“It’s getting worse,” she said. “The mentality of the inmate is getting bolder. They know we’re understaffed. We’re there eight hours a day, and we have a lot of things to get done. They’ve got 24 hours a day to figure out how they’re going to beat us, and nothing else.”
