Lawmakers look to arm prison guards with pepper spray

Published 4:55 pm Wednesday, May 18, 2016

HARRISBURG — A Pennsylvania bill modeled on a federal law signed by President Barack Obama earlier this spring to give pepper spray to federal corrections officers would provide the same protection to state prison guards.

The federal law was inspired by the murder of Eric Williams, a corrections officer at USP Canaan, in northeast Pennsylvania.

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Williams, 34, was working alone on a cell block with more than 100 prisoners when he was attacked in February 2013 by an inmate and stabbed almost 130 times.

At the time of his death, Williams was armed with a set of keys, a flashlight, handcuffs and a radio.

“Those aren’t weapons,” his father, Don Williams, said Wednesday.

Don Williams lobbied for the federal pepper-spray law after Eric’s murder.

“The union has been fighting to get pepper spray and other safety modifications for years,” Williams said. “It took my son’s death and families marching on the Capitol” to get the bill passed.

“Things have to change,” said Darrell Palmer, regional vice president of the Council of Prisons local corrections officers at USP Canaan and other federal prisons in Pennsylvania and neighboring states.

“These inmates are ruthless. If an inmate doing life in prison kills a corrections officer and they give him another life sentence for it, how is that justice?” Palmer asked.

Palmer said prison administrators were resistant to giving guards pepper spray out of concern that an inmate would get access to the weapon or that misuse of the pepper spray would lead to lawsuits.

Those concerns were a reflection of the lack of respect corrections officers get, Palmer said.

“We’re the bottom of the barrel” in law enforcement, Palmer said.

A pilot program in the federal prison system showed that the use of pepper spray cut the amount of time needed to contain violent incidents by one-third.

The federal pepper spray bill was signed into law in March, and allows corrections officers in all federal prisons, except minimum security facilities, to carry pepper spray as long as they complete training on its use.

That move comes as Pennsylvania’s state prisons have seen a surge in violence, making it logical to provide the same protection to guards in state prisons, said state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Fayette County, one of the authors of the state bill.

“To me, this is a no-brainer,” Snyder said.

There were more attacks on prison workers last year in Pennsylvania than any year since 2009. While the total number of assaults increased only modestly from 2014 to 2015, the number of attacks on staff characterized as “major” by the Department of Corrections jumped 20 percent. A major assault is one in which the victim required medical care outside the prison.

Department of Corrections data show that, on average, there were almost two attacks per day on state prison employees last year. And, on average, one prison worker a week was injured seriously enough to require outside treatment.

Snyder said she had just toured a state prison in her district and saw only one of four corrections officer on a cell block equipped with pepper spray for protection.

Considering the violence in the prison system, “that’s just ridiculous,” she said.

Corrections officers “have historically not carried weapons” out of concern that those weapons could be accessed by prisoners and used against the guards or other staff.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Amy Worden said that “certain designated staff,” those that are first-responders in times of crisis, are allowed to carry pepper spray at all times. Each facility has pepper spray in locked boxes for guards to use if needed.

The legislation is supported by the union representing state prison guards.

“This is a common-sense approach that is long overdue and will help officers improve the safety for everyone in a state prison,” said Jason Bloom, president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association. “The federal law had support from both parties in Congress and was championed by U.S. Sen Pat Toomey. We look forward to working on a similar bi-partisan effort in the General Assembly.”

Advocates for prisoners are divided over the bill.

“Every officer should be able to protect themselves,” said David Sprout with the Lewisburg Prison Project, a prisoners rights organization.

Sprout added though that his group believes that pepper spray “is being overused” in some of the federal prisons.

Based on complaints from prisoners, he thinks the use of pepper spray varies from lock-up to lock-up.

That alleged misuse centers on reports that guards use pepper spray to subdue prisoners who are not posing threats to staff, he said.

Sprout said that if the state is going to make pepper spray available to more guards, there should be increased training and a review process to examine whether the use was appropriate if a guard does employ pepper spray to subdue an inmate.

Thomas Dichter, a spokesman for Decarcerate PA, said his group is opposed to the idea. Dichter’s group advocates for steps to reduce the number of people in prison.

Dichter said that if lawmakers are serious about safety in prisons they should tackle prison overcrowding and seek to reduce the use of practices such as putting prisoners in prolonged stints of solitary confinement.

“Giving prison guards more weapons is not what we need to do to reduce violence,” he said.