Failures prompt Georgia prison lawsuit | The Augusta Chronicle

ATLANTA — Georgia taxpayers could be on the hook for a federal lawsuit filed this week alleging state officials’ failure to repair prison locks resulted in an inmate’s murder.

The Georgia Department of Corrections has reportedly spent more than $1 million fixing the automated locks on cells at the short-staffed, maximum-security Hays State Prison in Trion, only after multiple beatings and murders. State auditors warned of the problem yearly starting in 2008.

According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of the mother of inmate Damion MacClain who was found beaten and strangled to death Dec. 26, 2012, prison officials knew that inmates could leave their cells in the middle of the night and roam at will. The mother, RaHonda MacClain, says she repeatedly told wardens and guards of threats made against her son, a 27-year-old convicted in DeKalb County of armed robbery.

The suit quotes an officer’s log entry on the night of MacClain’s death that inmates had freely slipped out of their cells. It alleges that a 15-percent vacancy left guards too short staffed to patrol some parts of the prison.

“The Defendants were deliberately indifferent in responding to the known security hazards at Hays, even as the level of violence escalated and numerous inmates and officers were victimized,” wrote the lawyers filing the suit.

via Failures prompt Georgia prison lawsuit | The Augusta Chronicle.