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Volume 120, Issue 5
VISTA The
“OUR WORDS, YOUR VOICE.”
Volume 119, Issue 19
Inmates and officer die in private prison
Following correctional officer Alan Herschberger’s death, inmate Dustin Patterson was killed by inmate Darren Padron. (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/ Ainsley Martinez)
Quinn Daugherty Reporter
Davis Correctional Facility (DCF) is an all-male private prison near Holdenville, Oklahoma run by Corecivic. Corecivic is the nation’s largest owner of partnership correctional, detention and residential reentry facilities. Corecivic also claims to be the “largest owner of private real estate used by government agencies,” according to their website. DCF opened its doors in 1997 under contract from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC) and has housed inmates ever since. A March 2021 audit report determined the facility was “staffed appropriately to address the maximum/medium security level population housed at DCF and movement of those inmates throughout the facility.”
Davis Correctional Facility (Provided/ Whitney Bryen)
Despite the audit, Corecivic acknowledged staffing shortages in a press release following the July 31 death of correctional officer Alan Herschberger. “We’re also committed to attracting and retaining qualified, professional staff at Davis,” Matthew Davio, Corecivic’s public affairs manager, said in a statement. “However, both public and private correctional facilities have faced staffing challenges across the country.” A little over a month following Herschberger’s death, inmate Dustin Patterson was killed by fellow-inmate Darren Padron. “Correctional officers reported they witnessed Darren R. Padron attack Patterson with various strangulation techniques including a lateral neck restraint, pushing his elbow into Patterson’s throat as he lay prone, and utilizing Patterson’s shirt as a ligature,” an ODOC investigator wrote in an affidavit. Patterson is one of three inmates to be killed at Davis Correctional Facility this year. Emergency records indicate there have been an additional 15 non-fatal stabbings at the facility this year as well. DCF’s inmate population as of March 2021 was 1663, and the facility was staffed with 301 employees as well as 139 contractors and volunteers. Per the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics Census, the average American prison’s ratio of prisoners to correctional officers is 4.9 to 1. In 2021 DCF’s ratio of employees (not just
correctional officers) to prisoners was 5.5 to 1. Additionally, as of March 2021, 97 of the facility’s 301 employees were hired in the last twelve months. The high turnover rate is common in all Oklahoma correctional facilities, private or state-owned. It was only in April that correctional officer recruit’s minimum wages rose 30% from $15.74 to $20.46 an hour, according to an announcement from the ODOC. A similar string of incidents occurred last year at a Corecivic facility in Tennessee. Three inmates in Hardeman County Correctional Facility died in the span of just four months. Two lawsuits were filed in response to the deaths. “Corecivic serially underinvests in prison staff, security and inmate healthcare at its prisons, leading to predictable and horrific results,” Daniel Horowitz, one of the inmate’s families attorneys wrote a legal filing. Another Corecivic prison, the Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing Oklahoma, closed in 2020 after the ODOC decreased its budget by $25.5 million. In 2015, a deadly fight broke out in the prison leaving four inmates dead. As of Sep. 24 2022, Corecivic Inc is worth $2.16 billion and incarcerated an average of 53,613 people in 2021, according to investigate. org. DCF and Lawton Correctional Facility, operated by GEO Group, are the only private prisons in Oklahoma.
Reduction rerun: university plans more faculty cuts Allison Miller Contributing Writer
Faculty at UCO has been told that President Patti Neuhold-Ravikumar wants to cut 30 faculty positions this year, according to an email by College of Liberal Arts Interim Dean David Macey. This comes only months after UCO students protested the 40+ faculty positions that were supposed to be cut last semester. This is the third year that 30 positions will be cut at the university, said Leeda Copley, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Gerontology, and Substance Abuse Studies. Faculty are not being told why these cuts are needed, but they do know there are financial issues within the university. They are also unaware whether the faculty positions to be cut will include currently vacant positions or not, said Copley. This month, UCO’s Faculty Senate released a resolution concerning its most important priorities in the 2022-23 term, which includes ensuring the policies in the Regional University System of Oklahoma (RUSO) Policy Manual and Faculty Handbook are respected and followed. The faculty handbook includes rules for how long before their dismissal a faculty member should be notified. The handbook says a non-tenured faculty member should be told they are not reappointed by March 1. When it comes to job termination due to a program being discontinued or reduced because of financial retreatments, tenured faculty members are required to be given 5 months written notice unless there is an emergency. However, non-tenured faculty members do not get a grace period. “Well, personally, it has been very stressful to be a faculty member here. For how many years have we been facing cuts, like, that is really, really stressful to not know if you’re going to have a job the next year?” said Copley, “You know, I feel kind of lucky,” she said. “You know, I have tenure. I’m in a department that is relatively doing OK. But my colleagues who are maybe in programs that have had more of a dip in enrollment, or my colleagues who do not have tenure, it is a really scary time to be here. You don’t know if you’re going to have a job next year.” Copley said that the faculty feels they are being left out of the big decisions being made about the university. According to Faculty Senate Proposal 2021-2022-02, “Seven of the eight positions on the Cabinet are held by members with an operational
focus rather than on day-to-day classroom responsibilities.”
This is the third year that 30 positions will be cut at the university. Faculty are not being told why these cuts are needed, but they do know there are financial issues within the university. (The Vista/ Logan Gassett)
This proposal asked that a faculty member be permanently added to President Neuhold-Ravikumar’s Cabinet, since “[t]here is no one on the Cabinet with the sole responsibility to provide faculty expertise and insight to the President and the rest of the Cabinet.” President Neuhold-Ravikumar wrote in her response that she did not accept the proposal due to the disruption of adding a new cabinet member every year. “Well, I am concerned that we are losing our reputation,” said Copley. UCO has a reputation for small class sizes and transformative learning. That will be harder to provide if class sizes get larger, since you can’t do the same things for a larger class that you can do for a smaller class, said Copley.