By Chris Kirkham
Huffington Post
LAKE ERIE, Ohio — A new report detailing a state inspection of a private prison in Ohio describes gang-related violence so commonplace and drug use so rampant that many guards are afraid to intervene — instead, they are leaving their jobs at an alarming rate.
The harrowing report released last month on conditions inside the 1,700-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution describes a tableau of dysfunction, lending confirmation to two previous audits that identified widespread problems at the facility.
In interviews with The Huffington Post, current and former correctional officers at the Lake Erie prison confirmed the findings in the state report while describing their own fears about going to work at the institution.
“It was common for us to speak about who was going to die first,” Paul Reynolds, a former correctional officer at Lake Erie who says he was released last year because of disagreements with CCA management, told HuffPost. “They were afraid to get sued for any little thing, so management basically tied our hands on everything. Within three months, we lost that prison to those inmates.”
Full story: Lake Erie Prison Plagued By Violence And Drugs After Corporate Takeover