104 correctional officers were fired in a 16-month period.

19 of them were criminally charged.

Their relationships with inmates often exacerbate an environment of crime.

It was summertime in Bishopville, and some inmates at Lee Correctional Institution were in a recreation yard, catching forbidden packages as they were tossed over a fence.

A correctional officer working in the maximum-security prison's west tower alerted the control room to an intruder dressed in dark clothing throwing the illegal goods on July 1, 2017, but the notification came slowly. It's not clear how much of a delay there was, but the officer's reaction was slow enough that prison officials launched an investigation to determine if she was involved in the so-called "throw-overs."

The officer eventually gave a voluntary written statement about what she was doing before she gave the alert.

"I was pretty much doing nothing, sleeping, eating and talking on the phone," she said.

She was one of 104 South Carolina correctional officers who were fired in a 16-month period from January 2017 through April 2018, according to records obtained by The Greenville News and Independent Mail through a Freedom of Information Act request. More than 400 other correctional officers were disciplined in that same period. All told, about 30% of the state's correctional officers were either fired or disciplined in that span.

Nineteen of the fired officers were criminally charged for alleged actions at work.

Among the most common refrains in the state Department of Corrections' discipline reports: Contraband cellphones being smuggled into prisons. Corrections officials blame the devices for the most egregious crimes committed by inmates, including the Lee Correctional riot on April 15, 2018, that led to the deaths of seven inmates, and a scam that led to the death of Army veteran Jared Johns of Greenville. Johns died by suicide after allegedly being blackmailed by a pair of inmates.

Other offenses also led to the firing of officers at South Carolina's 21 prisons.

On Nov. 6, 2017, an officer at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia was arrested. He was accused of opening cell doors for inmates and allowing them to fight while he acted as their referee, according to the letter written to document his termination.

On Jan. 25, 2018, an officer at Allendale Correctional Institution in Fairfax left his security post in a recreation area before an inmate escaped through a hole cut in a fence.

Like the officer at Lee, these officers at Allendale and Kirkland were fired.

The Greenville News and the Independent Mail sought correctional officers' discipline records in April 2018, after thehourslong predawn riot that left seven inmates dead at Lee. To date, no charges have been filed in connection with that, the nation's deadliest prison riot in a quarter-century.

The 600 pages of disciplinary records were provided by the Corrections Department in May 2019, more than a year after the Freedom of Information request was submitted.

Correctional officers were disciplined for 20 different offenses, records show. Negligence, violation of rules and unprofessional conduct were the most common infractions. Officers also were disciplined for sleeping on the job, insubordination, gross misconduct and using excessive force.

"It is a unique environment that presents these types of challenges, and we take them very seriously," said Corrections Director Bryan Stirling. "If someone does these things, we are going to discipline them, terminate them, and in some cases as you've seen, we are going to charge them with a crime.

"We just have to hold people accountable and responsible for their actions, and I want other folks who work here to see that as a deterrent."

The firings of correctional officers came during a period when Stirling's department has faced chronic staffing shortages at prisons because of high turnover rates, and the current tight labor market has compounded the problem. Despite pay raises and intensified recruiting efforts, the DOC currently has 1,752 front-line officers and 727 unfilled positions.

From January 2017 to April 2018, Kirkland and Ridgeland Correctional Institution had the highest number of disciplined officers with 42 each, records show. Thirteen other prisons each had at least a dozen officers disciplined during the same period.

"Those numbers are extremely disturbing," said state Rep. Gary Clary. The Republican from Clemson is a member of a state House of Representatives oversight panel that is reviewing the Corrections Department.

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Records show at least 80 of the state's highest-ranking correctional officers were disciplined between January 2017 and April 2018. About 18% of the officers disciplined in that period were ones who had achieved the higher ranks.

"You expect the people who are there and are seasoned are not liable to do those type of things," Clary said.

SC inmate says he had sex in prison dayroom with a correctional officer

On repeated occasions, correctional officers were fired after being accused of engaging in sex acts with inmates.

In May 2017, an officer was fired after her phone number was found in a cellphone confiscated from an inmate at Allendale Correctional Institution.

"The inmate stated that he had been in communication with you on the phone on several occasions and alleged that he had sex with you in the upstairs dayroom," wrote Corrie Unthank, the DOC's employee relations chief. "It is my understanding that you deny having had sex with the inmate, however, you cannot deny that it was your telephone number found in the inmate's cell phone."

At Kershaw Correctional Institution, a correctional officer was charged in January 2018 with sexual misconduct with an inmate and misconduct in office. Unthank wrote that arrest warrants stated the officer let an inmate kiss her, touch her breasts and put his hands down her pants.

An officer at McCormick Correctional Institution, Amesha Reynolds, was charged with misconduct in office, accused of sending nude photos of herself to an inmate. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, described in electronic court records only as a "miscellaneous criminal offense." She was sentenced to 30 days in jail, which was suspended to time served, two days.

The Greenville News and Independent Mail are identifying only those correctional officers who were fired, criminally charged and whose convictions and sentences could be confirmed.

A lieutenant at Kirkland was demoted and transferred to Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia after he confided to a warden that he slept with another prison employee after becoming intoxicated at a Christmas party.

"You stated you started talking to an employee (which you would not give the name) and things led to another and you woke up in bed together the next morning. You also stated she may be pregnant," former Kirkland warden Willie Davis wrote in the employee's demotion letter.

Drugs find their way into South Carolina prisons

In Ridgeville, an officer at Lieber Correctional Institution was fired after being accused of being paid thousands of dollars for helping inmates get the drugs they wanted.

Correctional officer Joshua Glover was criminally charged in March 2018 with misconduct in office, furnishing a prisoner contraband and several related offenses.

According to his termination letter, Glover said he had brought marijuana into the prison for inmates about 10 times and tobacco about 15 times. All of the offenses occurred during a three-month period, and he received about $6,000 from the inmates for the deliveries, according to his termination letter.

Glover pleaded guilty to misconduct in office and furnishing prisoners contraband. For each charge, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, suspended to 15 months behind bars and two years probation. A conspiracy charge, drug charge and a charge of accepting bribes were dropped, according to electronic court records.

Raven Freeman, a correctional officer at McCormick for nearly six years, was arrested after she attempted to bring contraband into the prison in April 2017. In her bag, officials found 16 cigars, more than 12 ounces of a green leafy substance that appeared to be marijuana, a pack of Newport cigarettes, a Samsung flip phone and a charger, according to her termination letter. Freeman pleaded guilty to misconduct in office and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, with the bulk of that sentence suspended, plus 18 months probation. A charge related to contraband was dropped, according to county court records.

A correctional officer at Kershaw was fired after someone reported that she had a fugitive from New York in her home, and she then refused a "reasonable suspicion drug test." According to her termination letter, "small amounts of narcotics that were packaged as if they were going to be smuggled" into the prison were found when the fugitive was apprehended. The termination letter did not identify the fugitive.

In April, two other officers, Joshua Cave and Douglas Hawkins, received six-month sentences after pleading guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Cave and Hawkins are among more than a dozen former DOC employees, including a nurse and food service employees, who were indicted after the deadly riot at Lee. Prosecutors said the employees accepted bribes to smuggle cellphones, narcotics and tobacco into prison. The charges are unrelated to the riot at Lee.

Officers fired for trying to provide cellphones to SC inmates

The discovery of a cellphone, $2,345 in cash and dozens of prepaid cards in a vehicle at the Lee prison in February 2018 led to the firing of twin sisters who had been hired as correctional officers weeks earlier, according to their termination letters.

Two other women who were newly hired correctional officers also were fired last year for trying to smuggle cellphones into separate prisons, records show. And an officer at Broad River lost his job about four months after being hired when he sought to pass a package containing a cellphone to an inmate.

Stirling, the DOC's director, has described contraband cellphones as one of the biggest problems at prisons throughout the nation. Gov. Henry McMaster said the phones contributed to last year’s deadly riot at Lee, where state officials have spent $500,000 to install cellphone-blocking technology.

That technology apparently didn’t prevent two inmates at Lee from carrying out a sextortion scam last September that targeted Johns, the 24-year-old Army veteran from Greenville. The inmates allegedly posed as the parents of a 17-year-old girl who purportedly sent Johns illicit photos. They threatened to go the police unless Johns paid them $1,189.

Minutes after receiving a final threatening text, Johns killed himself.

Other firings in SC prisons: Pink flip-flops and an injured inmate

The reasons other officers were fired varied widely.

An officer at Trenton Correctional Institution worked at the medium-security prison less than a month before being fired in May 2017. According to his termination letter, another officer saw him at a gas station just after 8 a.m. buying beer while wearing his prison uniform — shirt untucked and unbuttoned — with pink flip-flops. Prison policy prohibits officers from buying alcoholic beverages while in uniform, according to the termination letter.

An officer at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County worked there just 18 days before he was fired. According to his personnel file, he was observed three times appearing to be asleep on the job. He also refused to help a sergeant who asked for assistance with property.

"I don't do property or booty duty," the fired officer responded with slang sometimes used by officers to refer to strip searches, according to his termination letter.

Some offenses were more serious.

At the Lieber prison, a correctional officer worked there for less than a year before being fired for closing a gate on an inmate, injuring the inmate's chest.

State Rep. Shedron Williams, a Democrat from Hampton who has worked as a counselor at Lee, voiced concerns about the treatment of inmates during a February meeting of the House oversight panel that is reviewing the DOC.

"We must continue to treat people with respect no matter what condition that they may be in, and when officers are not doing that, when administration is not doing that, it becomes a problem to me and most of my colleagues," Williams said.

Hiring and retention problems at SC prisons mean 'it's one in, one out'

Since 2014, average starting salaries for correctional officers have increased from $26,826 to $34,311. Add in overtime pay and officers are making an average of nearly $40,000 this year, Stirling said in an interview Tuesday.

"Our salaries are better than they have ever been," he said.

But his department is still having a tough time filling vacancies. He said one obstacle is that prospective officers are uneasy about working alone in prison dormitories.

Stirling said newly hired officers typically last less than a year on the job.

"Some leave of their own accord," Stirling told the oversight panel. "Some are fired for not following policy. Some are arrested."

South Carolina is not the only state that has dealt with correctional officers being arrested. In Georgia, for instance, FBI agents arrested 46 current and former correctional officers at nine facilities in 2016 after a two-year investigation.

In South Carolina, the DOC used to rely on drugs tests and background checks to screen applicants. Now the agency has started giving each applicant a six-minute "integrity-character" test. Questions include whether an applicant would use unlawful force on an inmate or report a co-worker for bringing contraband into a prison.

For now, however, the hiring and retention problems have created a troubling equation for the DOC, Stirling told a legislative panel in February.

"Basically, it's one in, one out, right now."

Leslie Sarinana contributed to this story.