250 Prisoners, 1 Guard, and a Fight: The Dangers of Understaffed Prisons
By Dwayne White
Dwayne White spent 12 years of a 25-year sentence in several federal prisons across the country before he was granted compassionate release in 2021. He is now an advocate for FAMM.
If anyone has ever seen a prison movie, then you know it can be a dangerous place. And how can it not be? You have the alleged worst of the worse housed in close quarters. People are treated like animals, so they behave as such.
With hundreds of personalities and people from all walks of life, there are many clashes. Those clashes have the potential to turn deadly — especially when there is an insufficient number of guards available to intervene.
I have spent a dozen years of my life in different prisons throughout the country, and I would like to tell you about what I have witnessed when there isn’t enough prison staff in America’s overcrowded prison system.
Prison staff is essential to day-to-day life in prison. Everything an inmate could possibly need or want depends on guards, including safety. Prison life is the complete opposite of home life. No one has the ability to do for themselves. There is no going to the kitchen to prepare yourself a meal. There is no going to the local market to buy groceries. In prison, the chow hall being run depends on prison staff. The commissary being open depends on prison staff. Sufficient medical care depends on prison staff. Communicating with loved ones depends on prison staff.
And the safety of prisoners depends on prison staff. From 2011 to 2015, I was housed in U.S. Penitentiary Leavenworth, Kansas. I recall a time when we were on the yard and two men began arguing over a soccer game. The disagreement continued into the housing unit. It didn’t take long for things to turn physically violent, with the men hitting each other across the head and face with padlocks. There were more than 250 prisoners in that unit — and only one guard. It took that guard several minutes to realize what was going on, and then even more time for additional guards to be pulled onto the unit. By the time things were under control, people were seriously hurt.
Imagine being sick in prison and needing to go to the Infirmary, but you’re unable to get proper medical care due to staff shortages. People in prison go for years without dental care, and more serious things are badly neglected, too. I once had a cellmate who was diabetic, and he needed food at certain times in order to balance out his insulin. Due to staff shortages, the prison was only allowed to feed one unit at a time, which threw off his food-to-medicine timing. This resulted in him going into a diabetic seizure.
Staff shortages in prisons come with many problems, all of which negatively affect the people who live there — and the people who work there. Understaffing is detrimental to the health and well-being of all parties involved. I know firsthand that doing nothing is only going to make problems worse.
I also know we can work toward solutions to understaffing, like a focus on improving correctional staff well-being and retention, as well as pushing for policies that safely reduce the prison population in an over-burdened and understaffed system. All of these fall under key FAMM policy priorities, such as independent prison oversight, second look sentencing, and compassionate release. I’ve been a FAMM member for a long time — since long before I was released — and I know that this reform work can have real impact.
Do you want to help Dwayne and FAMM fight for safer conditions for people who live and work in prisons? You can start by helping our efforts to implement the Federal Prison Oversight Act. Consider giving a monthly gift today.
