Apr 3, 2016 3 min read

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale announced earlier this year he plans a top-to-bottom review of the state Department of Corrections and its prisons.

He should begin that review with SCI-Greene.

Several incidents in recent months at the maximum-security prison in Franklin Township are raising red flags about what is happening inside the prison walls.

Two corrections officers were assaulted in the past four months – one was stabbed with a shank nearly a dozen times in November and the other slashed with a razor blade last month.

Three other officers were charged in February and accused of running a contraband operation described by investigators as a “rent-a-center” in which televisions and other electronics were traded by the guards to inmates in exchange for confidential information.

What is more disturbing is one of the defendant’s lawyers alleges the supervisors of the accused guards knew about the operation and encouraged it to get the confidential information.

“It’s a way of getting information to protect the facility,” said attorney Chris Blackwell about the methods the guards use to persuade confidential informants to cooperate. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing because it achieved results.”

During the guards’ preliminary hearing Wednesday, Daniel Meinert, the state Department of Corrections investigator who brought the charges, said there were “rumors” of such behavior in numerous prisons across the state two years ago. The issue was discussed and corrections officers at SCI-Greene were ordered in September 2014 to “stop doing it immediately.”

It apparently continued, however, prompting Meinert to investigate and set up hidden cameras in a strip area of the jail in January 2015. Meinert said footage shows guards Michael S. Berry Jr., Andrew J. Schneider and John C. Smith Jr. trading electronics with inmates and allowing them to carry contraband into the prison.

The Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association union that represents the guards across the state declined to comment on the case. But they fought a 30-day suspension levied against Smith Jr. and were able to get it reduced to a written reprimand. They’re also fighting the formal suspensions of the other guards, although the three corrections officers remain suspended indefinitely while awaiting the outcome of these charges.

A supervisor from the neighboring state prison in Fayette County also testified during the preliminary hearing, and said what might not be allowed at one prison could be permitted elsewhere. Maj. Joseph Trempus, who oversees unit management at SCI-Fayette, said there are numerous procedures that must be followed, but there are also many unwritten rules.

“This again is an example of an unwritten procedure,” Trempus said during his testimony. “It would be up to the facility, up to the officers. I would venture there would be some chain of command.”

Now is the time for DOC officials in Harrisburg to review their own policies – with or without a statewide review by the auditor – and decide whether or not this unwritten policy of trading contraband for information should be accepted in their prisons.

It’s clear the SCI-Greene maximum-security prison, which houses nearly three-quarters of the state’s death row inmates, can be a dangerous place and working conditions for the corrections officers and staff are difficult. As Blackwell stated, the guards saw the trades as a way to “protect” the prison.

But there have to be better ways.

And there needs to be greater accountability and more controls set in place to ensure the trading of contraband isn’t condoned or even coordinated by the prison staff.