State House rejects move to pay for more prison guards

Thursday, May 26th 2005, 6:21 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) The Oklahoma House approved a $409 million budget for state prisons Wednesday after defeating a move to appropriate another $12 million to hire more prison guards.

Along party lines, House members rejected a request by Rep. Terry Harrison, D-McAlester, to send the Department of Corrections' budget back to a House-Senate conference committee with instructions to add money to bring staffing levels up to 90 percent of maximum guard strength.

House Republicans who opposed the idea agreed that staffing levels for state correctional officers are low but said more time is needed to find a solution.

``We can do better next year. I believe we will,'' said Rep. John Trebilcock, R-Broken Arrow.

Harrison, whose district includes the maximum-security Oklahoma State Penitentiary, said more guards are needed to hold state prison inmates safely behind prison walls and avoid jeopardizing the safety of prison guards.

``We all know the current situation is horrible,'' Harrison said. He said DOC needs $37 million more in the budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 just to maintain current staffing levels. But the proposed budget included only $25 million more.

``We all know the current situation is horrible,'' Harrison said.

Fights between inmates are common and threaten the safety of correctional officers, who frequently must guard hundreds of inmates single-handedly.

Five years ago, a guard at the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, 28-year-old Joe Allen Gamble, died after his throat was slashed while trying to help a fellow guard who was stabbed by an enraged inmate.

``The turnover rate is so high you wouldn't believe it,'' said Rep. Mike Mass, D-Hartshorne, who described the issue as ``a flat issue of common decency.''

Mass said the federal government took over Oklahoma's prison system in the 1970s because inmates were being neglected and mistreated. Mass suggested that the government take it over again ``because we are mistreating our own people.''

``We can do better and we should do better,'' he said.

Rep. Gus Blackwell, R-Goodwell, said the problem of low staffing levels and low pay for state prison guards has developed over many years cannot be cured overnight.

Trebilcock said DOC's budget represents a 6.5 percent increase over the previous year's budget. He said inmate health care costs are bloating the budget and that administrators are exploring the use of technology to cut health care and transportation costs for inmates requiring medical attention.

The state's inmate count has grown more than 100 percent over the past 16 years and stood at 23,802 on Monday.