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News in Brief

CA: Dept. of Corrections sergeant Richard Selio murdered his estranged wife on Sept. 26, 1999, then shot and killed himself after a SWAT team stormed his house following an eight hour standoff. Selio was a transport officer at the California Institute for Men. His wife, Teresa, also was a CDC employee.

Canada: Prison director Ole Ingstrup criticized the Toronto Sun in an internal memo for what he called "negative and distorted" news reports concerning the Correctional Services department. The paper obtained a copy of the memo in Jan. 2000. News stories have focused on lavish spending by Ingstrup and other prison officials. Ingstrup defended his involvement in an international corrections conference that resulted in a $70,000 travel bill.

CT: Prison recreation supervisor Larry J. Moore, 45, was arrested Oct. 12, 1999 and charged with stealing $8,100 he had collected to pay expenses for a correctional conference. Moore, employed at Carl Robinson Corr. Institution in Enfield, allegedly misused funds designated for the National Correctional Recreation Association conference held in March 1999. He was placed on paid administrative leave.

DE: Adams Catalogue is a company marketing hygiene and grooming supplies to prisons and jails. All their products, shampoo, soap, toothpaste, etc., is clear and in see through containers. Company president Stuart Modell said his company is already selling to prisons and jails in 20 states and marketing hard around the country.

IA: On February 4, 2000, former 3rd judicial district chief juvenile court officer Daniel Conway III, was sentenced to one year in federal prison for bank fraud and wiretapping. Conway stole almost $20,000 in state funds for his personal use and illegally tapped an employee's cell phone. Conway claims he was in an alcoholic haze and doesn't remember anything.

MA: In October, 1999, former federal probation officer turned criminal defense lawyer, Frederick Ford, 48, was charged in federal court with attempting to hire an undercover cop to kill two of his criminal associates. Ford was afraid the would-be victims would reveal his involvement in the kidnapping of drug dealers.

NC: On Sept. 8, 1999, Wayne County sheriff's detective Bobby Braswell, 47, was charged with 22 counts of coercing sex from five female jail detainees. Braswell, a deacon at a local church, is accused of committing the sexual misconduct over a two-year period. He had resigned in April, 1999, after the sheriff received an incriminating videotape.

NC: U.S. District Court Judge G. Ross Anderson criticized Greenville County jail officials and their lawyers during an Oct. 4, 1999 trial in which five judges said their telephone calls to the facility had been illegally recorded.

NE: On February 18, 2000, Douglas County jail guard Aleet Mickles, 30, was arrested on charges of smuggling marijuana into the jail for prisoner Anthony Stanfield. Stanfield was also charged.

NM: On January 20, 2000, San Juan county jail guard Darren Howell was convicted of federal civil rights charges stemming from the sexual assault of jail prisoners. Howell is still facing federal drug charges. Jesus Monclova and Darrell Whitaker are also jail guards charged with sexually abusing prisoners and drug dealing in the jail.

NY: On January 24, 2000, Rikers Island jail guards Enrique Castillo, 34, and Irving Carabello, 39, were charged with firing a gun and threatening the employees of a nude dancing bar in Queens. The incident began when the guards started grabbing the dancers. When club bouncers tried to throw them out, Castillo pulled a gun, fired a shot in the air and fled with Carabello. Both men were suspended with pay from their jail jobs pending the outcome of the criminal charges.

OH: Mansfield Correction Institution guard Timothy Watkins, 40, was arrested on September 14, 1999 and charged with bribery for accepting a $200 payment from a prisoner to smuggle drugs into the facility.

OH: Patricia L. Graham, 47, was pregnant and incarcerated at the Dayton Human Rehabilitation Center, a local jail, when the facility doubled its capacity on Sept. 7, 1999 by adding bunk beds. Graham was assigned to a top bunk, which had no ladders. When she complained Graham said she was given the choice of an upper bunk or going to the hole. She tried to climb up to her bunk and fell; that evening she began bleeding vaginally, and later had a miscarriage.

SC: On January 16, 2000, two unidentified federal prisoners awaiting deportation to Cuba took a male guard and a female nurse hostage at the Columbia Care Facility. The facility is a hospital prison operated by Just Care, a private, for profit prison company. The prison holds 60 prisoners. The hostage takers surrendered after six hours and being promised a speedy deportation to Cuba. The hostages were unharmed.

VA: On January 16, 2000, Augusta Correctional Center prisoner Henry Parker, 41, was stabbed to death by two other prisoners. Parker became the third Virginia prisoner killed in six months. In September, 1999, Ricky Lewis, 37, was stabbed to death at the Greensville Correctional Center, and John Swartz, 48, was killed at the Sussex I prison after a fight with another prisoner in December, 1999.

VA:In Oct. 1999 former state prison guard Kevin VanVlett, 27, was convicted of aggravated sexual battery, taking indecent liberties, and assault and battery involving two boys ages 6 and 10. VanVlett had been fired from the Sussex II facility shortly after his arrest.

WA: In December, 1999, the King County (Seattle) jail paid $650,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by female guards. The plaintiffs claimed they were sexually harassed by male co-workers and prisoners. $325,000 of the settlement goes to nine female guard plaintiffs who filed the suit; $225,000 goes to their attorneys and $100,000 is for female jail employees who can show they were subjected to a hostile work environment.

WA: On February 22, 2000, Clallam Bay Corrections Center sergeant Monica Sukert, 38, pleaded guilty to having sexual contact with a male prisoner at the facility. Sukert was sentenced to one year in jail with all but ten days suspended. Sukert is the first DOC employee prosecuted under a recently enacted law that bans sexual contact between prisoners and staff.

WV:During an Aug. 8, 1999 confrontation between prisoner David Williams and guards in the maximum-security Quilliams II unit at the Mount Olive Corr. Center, Williams pulled a .22-caliber pistol and fired two rounds before he was subdued. No one was injured. It was later determined that Williams' girlfriend, Anna Marie Thomas, had smuggled the gun in during a contact visit by hiding it in her panties.

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