Florida Prison Guards Openly Tout White Supremacy
Florida corrections officials regularly receive reports about guards’ membership in the Ku Klux Klan and criminal gangs, according to former prison inspectors, and current and former officers.
Landwebs
Public documents and interviews with a dozen inmates and current and former corrections employees in Florida, the nation’s third-largest prison system, reveal a persistent practice among guards to openly tout associations with white supremacist groups to intimidate inmates and Black colleagues, reports the Associated Press. Corrections officials regularly receive reports about guards’ membership in the Ku Klux Klan and criminal gangs, according to former prison inspectors, and current and former officers. Few such cases are thoroughly investigated by state prison inspectors; many are downplayed by officers charged with policing their own or discarded as too complicated to pursue.
In summer 2021, one guard allowed 20-30 members of a white supremacist inmate group to meet openly inside a Florida prison. And while corrections officers are required to file “incident reports” if they see a co-worker acting inappropriately, in some Florida prisons supervisors often tell them not to email the reports and, instead, tell their supervisor verbally what happened or write it longhand. A superior officer then types it up, choosing the language and framing the event. Meanwhile, any possible investigation by the inspector general into reports of abuse by white supremacists or other gang members working as correctional officers can be hampered by state law limits to the use of inmates as confidential informants and guards being reluctant or afraid to snitch on their colleagues. And most state prisons and police departments throughout the U.S. do very little background checking to see if new hires have extremist views.
