Plan To Curtail Guard Towers Opposed--Mining Journal

There is a debate going on in Michigan about cutting back on guards in guard towers in the Michigan prison system in favor of electronic surveillance cameras. This is a bad idea.

Maximum security prisoners don't respect cameras. They respect the snipers. When a "lifer" has nothing left to lose but his life, how much effect will a camera have? Deterrence is the only thing that keeps maximum security prisons under control. Here is part of a story from a recent issue of the Daily Mining Gazette:

In July, a warning shot from a guard in the tower of the Carson City Correctional Facility was the only thing that gained control in a melee involving four inmates and correctional officers.

That's a circumstance that correctional officers at the Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility say they face periodically. Carson City houses levels I, II and IV prisoners, and the correctional officers at the maximum security prison in Baraga must deal with Level V offenders, or as one called it, "the worst of the worst."

These are not nice people in Level V prisons. They are convicted murderers, rapists, arsonists, drug dealers, bank robbers, habitual offenders and the worst parts of the human condition. They are a threat to society and belong where they are. This means that the prison guards have to exercise total control over the prisons. If a warning shot can stop a killer from murdering or beating a prison guard or another prisoner, then it doesn't need to be changed.

If they wish to add cameras to the guard towers in addition to keeping the snipers in place, I have no issue with it. But replacing snipers (or gunners if they so wish to be called) with cameras OR reducing the number of guards up there in favor of electronics is a REAL bad idea.

Cut coffee or weight rooms out of maximum security prisons, not the guards in the guard towers. If the prisoners can seize control of a prison, they can get out.

I can't imagine the chaos that would result if Alger Maximum Security Prison near Munising, MI, emptied or Marquette Max in Marquette, MI, experienced a mass breakout. The same thing goes for Baraga Max near Baraga, MI. The local police departments would be outnumbered and the residents of those small Upper Peninsula towns would begin to be murdered in their homes, front yards, or in the street. The crime wave would be unprecedented.

Replacing a sniper with a camera? I don't think so! Those towers need to be manned 24/7. See the link below or do a Google search on "Michigan guard towers prison."

Addendum 8/13/04: I think there should be gun turrets at the end of every hallway in Level V prisons as well as the gun towers.