Prison out to pinpoint riot leaker
Posted on Thursday, May 11, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/154316/
Prison investigators have administered lie-detector tests to the staff at the lockup in Calico Rock to determine who gave photographs and other documents to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for a story about how an unofficial inmate transfer policy may have contributed to race riots at the prison this spring.
No one has been fired or forced to resign at the North Central Unit, Dina Tyler, Department of Correction spokesman, said Wednesday, but one staff member has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. Tyler declined to identify that staff member and said the mandated time off would be unpaid leave unless the employee wanted to use vacation time.
Releasing confidential information to the public violates department policy and ethics pledges, Tyler said. “It’s not just to the newspaper, it’s anyone,” she said. “I can’t just go to the grocery store and hand [confidential records ] out. I can’t give them to my friends.”
An April 23 story in the Democrat-Gazette revealed an unofficial transfer practice that sent troublesome black inmates to the remote Ozarks prison that then had an all-white staff. The story included documents and photographs as well as information from several anonymous sources at the prison.
Citing exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act, the department previously had denied the newspaper access to those documents and photographs.
The story described a policy that sent black inmates from prisons in the Delta to the Calico Rock lockup, known within the prison system as a stronghold for white supremacist prison gangs, as a punishment for poor behavior. Prison officials deny this practice.
Shortly after the story was published, Deputy Director Larry May, a former warden at the prison, and three internal affairs investigators arrived at the Calico Rock prison. The internal affairs investigators began conducting voice-stress analysis tests, which national experts say are useless in determining whether someone is being truthful. The investigators have traveled at least twice to the prison for a total of three days.
May, according to anonymous sources, gave a speech to correctional officers exhorting them to be team players and emphasizing that talking to the media violated that team ethic.
Tyler said she couldn’t say how many staff members were investigated other than “a lot.” She also couldn’t confirm the content of May’s speech.
The prison has seen racial unrest this year. Since mid-March, at least three riots disrupted operations at the 500-bed medium-security prison in rural Izard County, leaving at least eight inmates injured. One lost an eye.
More than eight high-ranking officers from other units have been at the prison for more than a month to provide extra security. Several of those officers are black. Tyler said they will remain at the prison for the foreseeable future.
In late March, after the second riot, 49 inmates were transferred to maximum-security prisons at Tucker and Brickeys. Prison officials said at the time that the transferred inmates were members of white and black gangs.
Since the last riot on April 13, no more disturbances have been reported.
The Correction Department reportedly often gives voicestress analysis tests as part of its investigations of staff members. Tyler said at least one piece of corroborating evidence must be found to correspond with a failed test to dismiss an employee.
“It’s an investigative tool,” Tyler said.
But the tool is useless in determining if someone is lying, said Mitchell S. Sommers, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who has conducted numerous scientific tests on voice-stress analysis.
“It doesn’t work,” he said, adding that no test he has conducted gauged an accuracy of more than 34 percent. “A coin flip is more accurate.”
Voice-stress analysis, used by many law enforcement agencies across the country, determines stress levels through recorded voice patterns.
“It is very good at detecting stress,” said Sommers, who has testified about the practice in civil lawsuits. “It isn’t good at detecting if stress is due to environmental factors. If someone is being interviewed by internal affairs, they might well be under stress. It doesn’t mean they were deceptive.”
Scientists have never determined how to determine if someone is lying, he said. “These devices take a shotgun approach.... No state allows them to be introduced as evidence in criminal trials.”
Gov. Mike Huckabee defended the department’s actions in an statement released through his press secretary, Alice Stewart.
“The Department of Correction has a spokesperson whose job it is to answer press questions. If other employees assume that role, the managers certainly have a right to know why those employees feel they should function in that role,” the statement read.
The state has a “whistleblower” law designed to protect public employees who report abuses or illegal activities. Arkansas Code Annotated 21-1-603 states that a public employer shall not take adverse action against a public employee if that employee communicates allegations in good faith to “an appropriate authority.”
National experts and the U. S. Supreme Court have said that determining inmate housing assignments based on race violates their constitutional rights.
Attorney general’s office spokesman Matt DeCample said it was not immediately clear if a newspaper is considered “an appropriate authority” under the law.