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Arkansas Democrat Gazette April 23rd
Prison seen as a powder keg
Veteran officer at Calico Rock lockup says it’s ‘just
waiting to blow’
BY CHARLIE FRAGO ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

CALICO ROCK - The first race riot this year at the
Calico Rock prison started over instant coffee:
Thats the official version.

A white inmate, according to official reports,
accused a black inmate of stealing his
commissary-issued beverage and a “scuffle” between
“friends” of both men broke out on March 21.

The riot injured three inmates. One lost an eye. A
second riot six days later precipitated the transfer
of 49 inmates, or 10 percent of the lockup’s
population, to other prisons. Most of those
transferred are members of white-supremacist or black gangs.

One more brawl between black and white inmates
took place earlier this month, leaving five more
inmates injured and a prison on the edge, according to
correctional officers working at the unit.

Prison officials haven’t noted publicly the
connection between the riots and a transfer policy
that disciplines black inmates by sending them to this
mediumsecurity lockup.

For years the policy has sent troublesome black
inmates “north of the [Arkansas] River” to this
500-bed prison in the Ozarks — the North Central Unit
— with an all-white permanent staff in a primarily
allwhite community, correctional officers, inmates and
advocates say.

The prison is a stronghold of white-supremacist
gangs — including the Aryan Nations, Aryan Circle,
White Aryan Resistance and other, smaller splinter
groups — and sources say that fact is further evidence
that the prison is a punishment destination for unruly
black inmates, some of whom are themselves gang
members.

This combustible mix endangers staff and inmates.
The disciplinary transfer practice also stands in
opposition to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on
prison racial segregation and raises questions about
how inmates are punished in the Department of
Correction.

Citing an ongoing investigation, prison officials
have denied Freedom of Information Act requests for
records relating to the riots, but the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette obtained disciplinary reports on 10
inmates after the fights. The supervising officer on
several of the reports concluded that the incidents
were “specifically” motivated by race.

The Correction Department didn’t want that message
made public, according to information also obtained by
the Democrat-Gazette. An internal memo of the minutes
of Warden Jimmy Banks’ management team from the day of
the second riot on March 27 includes this comment from
Banks: “When discussing [the incident] with outside
individuals or entities, it should be with a positive
spin.” Banks has declined repeated requests for
comment over the past three months since the newspaper
began investigating accounts of punishment transfers.
So has Banks’ chief of security, Maj. Curtis Meinzer,
and Director Larry Norris.

The department also has denied a slew of Freedom
of Information Act requests submitted by the
Democrat-Gazette over the past several weeks. Those
requests included any video or photographic records
from the riots, inmate statements, a purported letter
from an inmate informant given to Meinzer hours before
the first riot warning of impending trouble, and a
list of department staff on duty at the time of both
riots.

In an e-mail, Department of Correction spokesman
Dina Tyler cited exemptions from the state law
concerning ongoing criminal investigations and inmate
records. Tyler often has released inmate records in
the past to the Democrat-Gazette.

The 10 major disciplinary reports, provided by a
confidential source and filed after the March 27 riot,
don’t include the “positive spin.” The reports,
written by correctional officers and supervisors,
provide details of the vicious fight, which left
puddles and spatters of blood on the floor of No. 10
Barracks after black inmates, swinging laundry bags
with metal padlocks inside, attacked sleeping white
inmates at 10:42 p.m. after lights out. The first
incident on March 21 was started by whites and left
two blacks seriously injured. A white inmate also
suffered injuries.

The Democrat-Gazette also obtained still photos
taken in the immediate aftermath of the March 21 and
27 riots. Some show images of bloodied inmates, while
others show black and white inmates proudly showing
their gang tattoos: one black inmate’s bare back
emblazoned with “Crippin’”; a white inmate’s chest
tattooed with “Thank God I’m White.” Most of the
six Correction Department officials interviewed for
this story asked to remain anonymous because the
department prohibits unauthorized employees’ speaking
with the press. But Elmer Bolia, a captain at Calico
Rock who retired in January after 16 years at the
prison, spoke publicly about the transfer policy and
its effects.

Bolia was in charge of organizing transfers at the
prison for much of his tenure. He confirmed that the
disciplinary policy did exist and that it contributed
to a working environment “so sh**ty I can’t even
describe it.” Working at Calico Rock has grown
worse since the first riot, officers at the prison
said.

On April 13, another racial disturbance broke out
after the lights were turned off in an open barracks.
Five black inmates attacked five inmates — four whites
and one Hispanic — leaving them with minor injuries.
Black inmates threw at least one heavy steel bed frame
in the path of advancing correctional officers.

The fight cleared after batonwielding
administrators — called in from Delta prisons after
the first two riots — presented a show of force. A
heavily armed emergency response team then cuffed and
removed most of the inmates in the 55-bed barracks to
the prison gym.

Correctional officers predict continued violence,
scoffing at the official version of the last fight
presented by the department as a cynical effort by
black inmates to get transferred to a Delta prison
closer to their families in southern Arkansas. Most of
the state’s 19 prisons are clustered in the Delta,
specifically in Jefferson, Lincoln, Lee and Chicot
counties. Statewide, the Correction Department houses
about 13,585 inmates.

“It’s a powder keg, just waiting to blow,” said
one veteran officer who has spent years at the Calico
Rock prison off Arkansas 5, just north of the town
named for the majestic bluffs over the White River in
rural Izard County.

“Something has got to give.” ‘SHORT-TERM
SOLUTION’ BLOWBACK At least initially, sending
black inmates to Calico Rock as punishment works,
especially for the Delta prisons, Correction
Department employees said. Only a couple of inmates
from prisons like the units at Varner or Tucker have
to be transferred before word spreads.

“It doesn’t take long. They [black inmates] start
to shape up and fly right. They see a couple go and
the rest get back in line,” said one veteran officer
who has worked at Calico Rock. “It’s a good short-term
solution, but it’s wrong.” The transfer policy,
for instance, adversely affects Calico Rock by raising
tensions, Bolia said.

You cant have your cake and eat it to,he said.

The nation’s largest prison system, with about
160,000 inmates, already has been told by the U.S.
Supreme Court that determining housing assignments by
race violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection
clause.

Writing the majority opinion in Johnson v.
California in February 2005, former Associate Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor said that California’s unwritten
policy of segregating prison inmates by race in intake
centers — lockups used to process incoming prisoners
or those being transferred from one prison to another
— was unconstitutional. Inmates’ civil rights “need
[not] necessarily be compromised for the sake of
proper prison administration,” wrote O’Connor, the
first woman justice who retired from the nation’s
highest court earlier this year.

When prison officials use race to determine
housing assignments without demonstrating a compelling
government interest, “society as a whole suffers,”
O’Connor wrote.

In a dissenting opinion, Associate Justice
Clarence Thomas wrote that constitutional precedent
demands that courts not second-guess prison
administrators. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia
joined the dissent.

“The Constitution has always demanded less within
the prison walls,” Thomas wrote, adding that earlier
cases had established a “broad, hands-off policy” for
the nation’s highest court when dealing with prison
matters.

Thomas also wrote that the inmate plaintiff in
Johnson v. California didn’t offer “obvious, easy
alternatives” to the California policy.

After the Supreme Court’s 6-2 decision, California
prison officials and inmates’ attorneys agreed to
integrate their intake centers.

What sources say is happening in Arkansas, though,
differs significantly from California’s practice. In
California, no one disputes that prison officials
segregated prisoners by race to forestall racial and
gang violence. In Arkansas, disciplinary transfers
tend to inflame racial hostilities, throwing black
inmates against whites deliberately, critics said.

REVERSE TRANSFERS The Correction Department
denies not only that it sends black inmates to Calico
Rock as punishment, but also that white inmates who
cause trouble are sent to the East Arkansas Regional
Unit at Brickeys or the Delta Regional Unit at
Dermott, where black officers, administrators and
inmates are more common.

Prison administrators also deny that March’s riots
or an earlier racial disturbance at the prison in
September 2003 have anything to do with racially based
transfers. The 2003 fights — much like a security
breakdown in November 2005, both committed by large
groups of inmates divided along racial lines — were
inspired by prisoners trying “to manipulate their
housing assignments,” said Tyler, adding that race
played only a coincidental factor.

Benny Magness, a Board of Corrections member,
regularly visits Calico Rock and often invites staff
to his house in Gassville. In seven years on the
board, Magness said, he has never heard of the prison
being a punishment destination for black inmates.

“Honestly, I never have,” he said.

Magness said he knows that many inmates — white or
black — don’t like to be transferred to the remote
prison because it is so far from their hometowns. He
said that inmate morale could be improved with more
varied job assignments.

“Inmates at Cummins have the opportunity to drive
a tractor,” he said. “We don’t have tractors up here.
I think that would help the unit some.” Race, in
Magness’ opinion, didn’t play a role in the riots.

“I don’t believe it’s a racial thing. I know the
appearance looks like it,” he said.

Bolia, however, said that race permeates almost
every interaction at the prison. White inmates see
incoming blacks as troublemakers. Black inmates
protest their assignment to Calico Rock as racist.

The transfer practice isn’t racist, Bolia said,
just necessary to try to maintain order systemwide.

“It’s just a tool,” Bolia said about the practice
of transferring inmates on the basis of race.

Bolia was the only person with inside knowledge of
the practice willing to speak publicly. He said while
the tool had its benefits in managing often violent
inmate populations — prison officials estimate about
13 percent of all inmates are in white, black or
Hispanic gangs — unintended consequences often crash
down on his officers’ heads.

Bolia and others said that for a black inmate to
get his “ticket South” it takes more than breaking
minor rules.

“Basically, it has to be felonious assault on an
officer — free-world charges — to get your ticket
punched South,” said Bolia, a former Detroit police
officer. “The black inmates knew it, and my officers
knew it. It’s a Catch-22 situation: If you transfer
someone after they assault an officer, that puts a
bounty on the officer’s head. If you don’t, then they
stay up here and things just get worse.” No one
can say for certain how long the disciplinary policy
has existed, but it’s been in place for at least five
years, Bolia and others said.

“That’s prison for you,” he said. “There are no
good decisions. The only good decision is the one that
happens to work out. The courts? They say you can’t
segregate by race. They also say you have to protect
an inmate’s safety. Those two things aren’t possible
... not together. Not at Calico Rock.” INMATE TALK
Before the riots, about 70 percent of the 517
inmates at Calico Rock were white. That’s
significantly higher than the system as a whole, which
is roughly 55 percent white, 44 percent black, with a
handful of other races.

The surrounding area also is primarily white. U.S.
Census Bureau statistics indicate that only 266 blacks
live in the four counties surrounding the prison —
Izard, Stone, Baxter and Fulton — out of a population
of about 75,000.

Since 2001, 825 black inmates have been
transferred to Calico Rock compared with 1,075 whites.
About 620 blacks and 760 whites have been transferred
from Calico Rock to other prisons over the past five
years.

Keith Prewitt, a prisoners’ advocate and former
inmate who spent nearly three years at Calico Rock in
the early part of the decade, said that everyone at
the prison knew about the prison’s reputation as a
punishment destination for black inmates.

Prewitt works with Carol Curry at Living in Truth
Inc., a Searcy County nonprofit inmate and parolee
advocacy organization. He continues to receive letters
from inmates at Calico Rock asking for his help in
improving conditions at the prison.

“It seems like the Correction Department just
thinks prison isn’t punishment enough. They really
like to make it hard on you. And anything they can do
to show you who is boss, they’ll find a way to do it,”
said Prewitt, who spent several years in prison on a
theft-by-receiving conviction.

One former Calico Rock inmate, Charles Randall
Davis, who is white, wrote the Democrat-Gazette
frequently over the past four months, contending that
racial tensions at the prison had reached a boiling
point.

Davis wrote that friction between black and white
inmates was dangerously high because of the transfer
practice. He also noted that the presence of an
allwhite correctional officer staff further inflamed
feelings of discrimination among black inmates and
increased the chances they would attack white inmates.

Davis, 49, is serving a 35-year sentence for a
1992 second-degree murder conviction in Fulton County.
Requests to interview Davis and another white inmate
at Calico Rock, Carl M. Hopper, were denied on Feb. 17
by the Correction Department, which cited security
reasons. Davis has since been transferred to the Delta
Unit.

Black inmates have similar complaints, although
their frustration often takes aim at different
targets.

Charmorro Williams, 32, a black inmate in prison
for a 1996 first-degree murder conviction in Jefferson
County, wrote the Democrat-Gazette on Feb. 28
contending that blacks were discriminated against in
job assignments and subjected to racial taunts by
white inmates.

Williams lost an eye after a white inmate threw a
lock at him during the riot on March 21. After a stay
at the prison hospital in Pine Bluff, he was
transferred to the Varner Supermax Unit.

A common theme in letters received from several
black inmates concerns their distress over being
imprisoned so far from their Delta or Little Rock
homes and the reluctance of their families to make the
long drive for visits.

Tyler acknowledged that the lack of visits and
racial mistrust plays a role in the black inmates’
behavior. But Arkansas inmates, she said, can’t
determine where they serve their time.

‘FLEXING MUSCLE’ Correctional officers,
speaking anonymously, confirm much of what the inmates
report.

“The punishment is to be in prison. Those inmates
aren’t in prison to be punished,” said one veteran
correctional officer at Calico Rock. “Our job is to
try to maintain as civil an environment as we possibly
can. But that’s impossible at Calico Rock. I’ve heard
the major [Meinzer, chief security officer at the
prison] say that he will blow the whole prison up
before giving up one inch to an inmate.” That kind
of tough attitude wears on staff — routinely armed
only with a tiny can of pepper spray — who are
expected to control an increasingly hardened, violent
and gang-ridden inmate population, sources said.

“Inmates have to let steam off somehow,” the same
officer said. “They play basketball, maybe have more
sex with each other than they otherwise would. But in
this prison, Warden Banks and Maj. Meinzer have this
attitude of escalation ... of flexing muscle. And
we’re the ones that have to write out disciplinaries
for little things that other wardens would ignore.”
Banks has had a 20-year-career with the Correction
Department, starting as a correctional officer at the
Maximum Security Unit at Tucker. Rising quickly
through the ranks, he served as assistant warden at
the Varner and East Arkansas prisons before becoming
warden at Calico Rock last June.

The Correction Department’s statistics support the
officers’ assertions. Between 2001 and 2005, Calico
Rock led the entire system in use-of-force incidents,
tallying 46. The next-highest total occurred at the
Cummins Unit in Lincoln County, with 23. Cummins has
more than three times as many inmates as Calico Rock.

Use-of-force involves aggressively removing
inmates from cells and the use of a variety of
weaponry, such as stun grenades and batons.
Use-of-force is authorized when an inmate refuses to
come out of his cell, assaults an officer or otherwise
acts in a way that cannot be controlled by normal
procedures.

‘ALWAYS DENIED’ After the March 21 riot,
administrators didn’t put additional security measures
in place except to require correctional officers, with
no additional armor or weapons, to perform more
checks, sources said.

Six days after the first riot, another one broke
out. This time, Tyler acknowledged that racial discord
had played a role in the violence.

“What started over coffee turned into something
racial. Inmate chatter got everyone riled up,” Tyler
told the Democrat-Gazette in late March, still
declining to describe the two incidents involving 22
inmates divided along racial lines as a race riot.

She did say that racially based prison gangs
played a role in the violence. Within a week, she
said, all the rioters, instigators and gang recruiters
were transferred to maximum-security lockups in the
Delta.

It would be two days after the second riot before
anyone at the Correction Department would confirm
either disturbance to the media. The third riot, on
April 13, was not made public until the
Democrat-Gazette inquired about it about four days
later.

In the days following the second riot, eight
high-ranking corrections officers from around the
state arrived at Calico Rock to work in rotating
shifts to calm the angry inmates.

Meanwhile, Tyler consistently portrayed the prison
as “calm” while acknowledging that the overall
situation between black and white inmates remained
“tense.” For now, Calico Rock’s leadership remains
intact, and the 154-member correctional officer staff
— already undermanned with 14 vacant slots — works
extra shifts.

“They’re [the Correction Department leadership]
just waiting for the media spotlight to switch on
something else. Then they’ll start shooting [blaming]
the little guys,” one officer said. “They do it every
time.” By mid-April, at least one officer had been
given a letter of reprimand over the fighting. Tyler
declined to identify the officer, citing exemptions
under the Freedom of Information Act.

For Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American
Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, the
situation seems to be following a predictable pattern.


“When state prison authorities engage in this type
of [disciplinary] practice, it’s always wrong, it’s
always illegal and it’s always denied by the DOC,” she
said.

Punishment prisons, determined by race, actually
are something new to Alexander. Before being contacted
by the Democrat-Gazette, she said she had never heard
of “that particular variant” on illegal segregation
practices in American prisons.

“It’s particularly disturbing on several levels.
But, most importantly, it implies that staff think
prisoners will have trouble with prisoners or staff of
another race,” Alexander said. “To then implement a
covert policy that reinforces and strengthens that
fear and distrust, it suggests significant racial
problems in Arkansas’ prison system.” Tyler said
black inmates who are transferred to Calico Rock, far
from being punished, are being exposed to different
cultures and may, as a “byproduct” of their stay in
the prison, “see a benefit of getting along with
people better.” “If you went to Chinatown tomorrow
and stayed there a while, wouldn’t you leave Chinatown
with a better understanding of that culture?” At
the Board of Corrections meeting in Texarkana on
Friday, the recent problems at Calico Rock weren’t
mentioned. But in the board report, prepared by each
prison’s warden and compiled into a packet, Calico
Rock’s inmate morale was assessed as follows:
“Inmate morale remains good. Inmates are looking
forward to, and signing up for, the upcoming softball
season to begin next month.”

An inmate at the state prison in Calico Rock stands
handcuffed after a riot in March in this photo
furnished to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by an
employee of the state Department of Correction.

The hands of an inmate extend from an isolation cell
at the Calico Rock unit. This photo was taken after a
riot in March and furnished to the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette by a Department of Correction
employee.

An inmate at the state prison at Calico Rock displays
gang tattoos typical of the Crips gang. This photo was
taken after rioting in March and furnished to the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by a Department of
Correction employee.

This inmate at the Calico Rock unit has tattoos of a
white supremacist gang. This photo was also taken
after the March riot and furnished to the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette by a Department of Correction
employee.

www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2006/04/23&ID=Ar00100&Section=Arkansas