Lee’s Blog 20

The Lewis Prison incident is one that I can still remember. Two prison guards were taken hostage by inmates Randy Wassenaar and Steven Coy. The two men had obviously planned their escape, though it went very awry. Wassenaar had beaten a guard and stolen his uniform from him. That way, he was able to pose as a guard and get into the guard tower that overlooked the entire prison campus. He then took Lois Fraley and Jason Auld hostage. Because of the way Wassenaar gained access to the tower, the two guards were totally unaware and were not able to subdue him. Fraley related how the situation just didn’t seem right to her when Wassenaar asked to be let in the tower. She tells us that her “stomach just knotted up-it didn’t feel right.” She goes on to tell us that Auld hit the button to let Wassenaar in before she could even tell him of her feelings.

What happened from that point to fifteen days later was awful. Officer Auld was critically injured immediately. He was then kept in the tower for seven days. The inmates finally released him after seven days so he could be taken away and his critical injuries tended to.

What all Fraley said was very scary. She relates how she was raped repeatedly. She also tells us how she contemplated suicide after four days by using the pin of her name badge to puncture her wrist vein. Thankfully, she did not do this. In an effort to become so unappealing that the two inmates would not want to rape her anymore, she stopped washing. She also stopped drinking so she would not have to urinate in front of them. The inmates had been telling her when she could and could not urinate.

I don’t believe the turnkey chapter in Britton’s book describes the hostage situation at Lewis. In the book, corrections officers lived at the prisons quite often for days at a time. Their working conditions were not good. These guards worked a whole lot of hours—far more than they should. Thankfully, that is not the case today.

The Director of the Department of Corrections for the State of Arizona at that time was Dora Schriro. She had been on the job for less than a year when the hostage incident took place. Schriro and Governor Janet Napolitano were at the prison to greet Fraley when she was released. Schriro relates in this article how she found that a full one-fourth of the Lewis corrections officers could not even pass the lowest level of the competency test given to guards. I feel it is obvious from the way Auld allowed Wassenaar access right away that there needs to be more training for guards so they know how to handle situations like this one before they become situations like this one. This showed that the tower was not the safe place it should have been. Schriro really appears to be a no nonsense leader who won’t take anything from anyone. Because prisons have been gendered for such a long time as masculine structures, Schriro will definitely have her work cut out for her as far as proving herself and earning the respect she deserves is concerned. One of the newspapers in the Phoenix area showed the hairstyles that Schriro has had in the past and criticized her for them. Phoenix Magazine sexualized Schriro when they wrote about her personal life that included her love life and also how she loves to garden.

Gendered organizations are all around us. The treatment Schriro received is proof of that. In an ideally non-gendered organization, this would not be happening.

Britton definitely has some good ideas. She says that more training is needed. She also says that better policies are needed. According to Britton, better policies could avert future hostage situations by inmates. Better training should include specific training for men’s prisons and women’s prisons. There are too many situations that are different between the two.

Because of the fact that prisoners are subordinates to corrections officers, a prison is a total institution. A prison has a very distinct hierarchy. A prison is a place where that hierarchy must definitely be followed in an effort to keep things peaceful and quiet.