Some days back, this paper conveyed the information that the Georgia Department of Corrections has honored Hays State Prison in next-door Chattooga County as its “Facility of the Year.” This is apparently based on scoring well on “measures including audits, bed utilization, vacancy rates and staff turnover rates.”
But not violence it appears, nor riots and sitdown strikes for those who recall some of the ways Hays, a high-security prison for both mental and hard cases, has made headlines in recent years.
A few days after the prison was so saluted, the Summerville News reported that “four Hays correctional officers were harmed during a dining hall fight around 3:30 p.m. May 18.” The paper went on to record three other instances where inmates had recently attacked and injured guards.
Guess it all comes down to what the taxpayers should expect of their billion-dollar-plus corrections system: good control of the prisoners or good “bed utilization.”
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