Seven inmates in a maximum-security prison in South Carolina were brutally killed with homemade knives on Monday morning as wardens struggled for seven hours to bring mass fighting under control.

With a further 17 inmates requiring medical treatment for the injuries in outside hospitals, the unrest at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopsville was the worst outbreak of fatal violence in the state in recent times. The killings bring the number of inmates murdered by fellow prisoners in South Carolina to 20 since January 2017, and marks an alarming increase in bloody incidents within the correctional system over the past five years.

Most of the victims appeared to have died as a result of stabbings or slashings with homemade knives, known as “shanks”. The weapons are ubiquitous within South Carolina’s 21 prisons.

“Put simply, anyone who can has a knife,” wrote Steve Bailey, a columnist for the local Post and Courier newspaper who investigated the condition inside state lock-ups earlier this year.

His research discovered a frighteningly steady rise in violent deaths among inmates in the state in recent years. Last year there were 18 – 12 murders and six suicides; in 2016 there were five murders and six suicides; back in 2009 the total of deaths was just two.

There has been a similarly steep rise in the past couple of years in serious assaults, with 250 inmates requiring hospital treatment in 2016 and 2017 alone.

Yet at the same time as violence has been increasing, the overall prison population has been steadily falling as part of a nationwide trend towards redirecting non-violent offenders to non-custodial sentences.

The fighting at Lee Correctional Institution, which houses about 1,600 inmates including some of the most dangerous in the state, erupted at about 7.15pm on Sunday night and quickly spread to three housing units. Control was not restored until shortly before 3am on Monday morning.

The deaths occurred as a result of inmates fighting each other in numerous altercations, the prison service indicated. Precisely what may have sparked the unrest was unknown.

The uptick in violence in South Carolina’s prisons has a number of causes, experts say, including gang activity, increasing prevalence of smuggled cell phones that exacerbates illegal trade and rivalries and other factors. But the overwhelming problem is staff shortages and the consequent dire morale among officers.

More than 600 staff positions are currently standing vacant in South Carolina – almost a third of the total correctional workforce.

A reason for that, in turn, is low pay, with the Post and Courier pointing out that a prison guard has an annual starter salary of about $27,000 – about $4,000 less than a garbage truck driver would bring home.

As a result of the shortages, there are simply too few guards to keep an eye on volatile prisoners. According to the state’s prison chief, Bryan Stirling, the ratio of officers to inmates is more than 200 – vastly above the standard of 30 recommended nationally.

The crisis of staff shortages is replicated across the country. Research by Pew Charitable Trusts has found many states – including Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Michigan, Missouri and West Virginia – grappling with the associated problems of shortages and high staff turnover.

Shane Bauer, a reporter for Mother Jones, witnessed the results of inadequate staffing when he spent four months working undercover as a prison guard in a privately-run lock-up in Louisiana. He found lax security standards because too few people were willing to take on such a dangerous job for such paltry pay.

“Without sufficient staff the prison environment became more violent,” said Bauer, whose book American Prison is publishing soon. “Standard safety procedures, such as routine checks on inmates, happened less frequently, and there were fewer resources for rehabilitative programs which meant that inmates had less to do and there was an increase in general frustration.”

Many prison systems are trapped in a vicious cycle. Fewer staff leads to inmates being locked up in their cells for longer hours, and that in turn exacerbates nascent mental health problems that are already so rampant that advocates have dubbed US prisons the “new asylums”.

At times the pressure cooker explodes. Last April in a separate South Carolina prison, Kirkland Correctional Institution, four inmates were strangled to death within a 30-minute period in a dorm that housed prisoners with mental illness.

According to the local newspaper the State, the victims were deemed a “nuisance” to the two other prisoners who murdered them.



