ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 28, 1996 TAG: 9612300078
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
THE WARDEN is stabbed. Inmates cheer, and a rampage is on. Stampeding convicts storm two unarmed guards; attempt to take over a room where locked prison doors are electronically controlled; set the prison library ablaze. Four prisoners are wounded when a guard opens fire with a semiautomatic rifle.
Was it a prison riot - that little, eh, disturbance Thursday at Buckingham Correctional Center? State corrections officials don't classify it as such. It scares people, don't you know, to think of prisoners rioting. Let's call it an incident, or a disorder or whatever. As if that will make us feel better.
The public can, in fact, be thankful it was not worse, much worse.
Buckingham's warden, Eddie Pearson, was reported in stable condition Friday at a Farmville hospital. The four inmates who were shot suffered only superficial wounds. State police did not have to be called to the maximum-security prison west of Richmond, indicating the ability of well-trained prison officials to get the situation in hand fairly quickly.
And, of course, the public can be appreciative that the outbreak of violence was contained inside the prison walls. Suppose the prisoners' charge on the control room had been successful, and hundreds of inmates had somehow managed to rush through open doors onto the streets. At Lorton, a convicted murderer was reported missing.
As this was being written, many questions remained unanswered. Was the stabbing of the warden part of a failed escape plan? How did the inmate get the weapon used to stab Pearson in the prison lunch room? According to Ronald Angelone, state corrections director, Pearson was in the meal hall to answer questions and ``this inmate walked up to him, said a few words and just stabbed him.'' Why?
Indeed, Virginians can be thankful no one was killed, no prisoners escaped, and it was not an out-of-control riot. All of which, nevertheless, offers limited comfort.
Next time it might be a different story. Next time, the day after, they may be doing body counts. And virtually for sure there will be a next time. Sorry, but that's the trade-off in our current criminal-justice policies.
We don't want the bad guys around; we want them locked up, gone from our midst for good. So we've sanctioned increasingly long sentences, no parole, in increasingly overcrowded facilities under increasingly restrictive conditions.
Not nice people, packed together in not nice surroundings. That's a bomb ticking, which state officials need to do more to defuse. Semi-permanent lockdowns won't suffice.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB