Tonight I'm going to speak about employee corruption in prisons. The two subjects that I?ll be talking about are violence against prisoners and employees illegally helping prisoners.
             The first topic is violence against prisoners. In California, eight prison guards were accused for staginggladiator style? fights among prisoners. The guards were accused of setting up prison yard fights amoung rival prison gangs in Corcoran Prison's High Security Unit between 1989 and 1995, and then shooting at them when brawls broke out. This resulted in guards shooting 31 unarmed prisoners, seven of them fatally. Amnesty International said,We are worried that investigations into this and other cased were hampered by cover-ups and the code of silence among prison officers.? This shows how there can be many more cases like this in the country that are covered up by the prison officer's code of silence.
             I thought of those dangerous guards when I began looking into the practices of Georgia's corrections commissioner, Wayne Garner. According to a 1996 federal lawsuit, this commissioner created a tactical squad that descends on prisons without warning. They haul prisoners-some without clothes-from their beds, then shackle and beat them. This ruthless squad allegedly looks for contraband. This very special squad dresses in black uniforms, with black berets and lace up black boots. They do not of course wear name tags. In a sworn statement that is part of the federal lawsuit charging Garner's squad with brutality, Mike Harvey a resident guard at Hays State Prison testifies how he described how one of the vicious squad members drove an inmate's head into a wall. The prisoner screamed. Blood went up the wall. Blood went all over the ground, all over the inmate. I heard a sickening cracking sound. Inmates were dragged along concrete floors and tossed over railings to a lower-level floor. Injured inmates wer
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