Week 8: Hostage Controversy
In the prison system there are always controversies that take place, that many times the media does not even know about. One specific incident that happened, was in the Maine State Prison located in Warren, Maine. It was a hostage situation where inmate Michael Chasse made a makeshift knife, taking a prison employee and another inmate hostage. Chasse then stabbed and bound both of the hostages. Prison guards handled the situation, and were able to control it and stabilize it. Prison officals said it was am isolated incident. One of the prison officals had this to say about the incident and how it was handled, “I don’t think there’s any facility in the country where you can have an episode like this that you do it 100% right. There’s always room for improvement. We’re looking at what we did right and enhancing that on what we can improve on”. One of the reasons that his incident took national attention was because there was a lawsuit filed, and is currently going through the court system.
However incidents like this are not unusual in most cases. While most of the cases are not as serious and do not get media attention such as this case, there are many times where prison guards and other inmates are in danger from violent situations. It is important that the safety of prison employees is secure at their workplace. Even though they work at a prison they deserve to have the personal safety secured. While employees need to be protected, other prison inmates need to be safe as well. They may be in there for many different things, but they deserve to not be attacked or taken advantage of, because they also need to have their rights protected.
These are all things, that with this article open up a world of questions involving prison safety for all those in the prison system.
http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=90336
