South Carolina jail plagued by rapes, assaults and security shortfalls, a federal report says Federal investigators found in a scathing report this week that a large jail in South Carolina vastly underreports the violence occurring behind its walls and lets dozens of inmates go unsupervised for so long that at least two killings of prisoners were reported to jail staff from outside callers.
According to the report, the jail has four times as many assaults as the Miami-Dade jail even though the south Florida jail has four times as many inmates.
The U.S. Department of Justice told the jail in Richland County, which includes South Carolina's capital of Columbia, that it must improve conditions as soon as possible — repairing holes in walls, fixing locks that don't lock at all and fixing broken light fixtures that otherwise might be turned into weapons.
Named the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, for a guard killed by inmates during an escape attempt in 2000, the jail has more openings for guards than the current number of actual officers, the report said.
Drugs brought into the facility caused eight prisoners to overdose in two months last year, according to the report released Wednesday by federal investigators.
