History > 2006 > USA > Prisons (II-III)

Inmate Tattooed With Child Victim's Name

September 28, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:55 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CARLISLE, Ind. (AP) -- An inmate serving a life term for molesting and killing a 10-year-old girl named Katie somehow got ''Katie's Revenge'' tattooed across his forehead, and prison authorities were trying to determine how it happened.

The Indiana Department of Correction placed Anthony Ray Stockelman, 39, in protective custody away from the general inmate population last weekend after authorities discovered the tattoo, said Rich Larsen, a spokesman for the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.

Stockelman was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to abducting, molesting and killing Katlyn ''Katie'' Collman. Katie was missing for five days before her body was found Jan. 30, 2005, in a creek about 15 miles from her home in the southern Indiana town of Crothersville.

Larsen refused to comment on what Stockelman has said about it or what else investigators have learned. He said he did not know how a picture of the crude tattoo was taken and distributed outside the prison, including on the Internet.

Collman's father, John Neace, said he heard about the tattoo from friends and believes it was the work of inmates.

''If I had to guess I'd say it's a statement from the inmates,'' he said Wednesday. Neace said has no idea whether his late daughter's distant cousin, who is also serving time at Wabash, played any role.

Stockelman's tattoo, which covers nearly his entire forehead, has ''KATIE'S'' in large letters and ''REVENGE'' below in smaller letters.

The search for Katie, a bright child who enjoyed basketball and the Disney Channel, had consumed Crothersville. Police initially believed she was abducted and slain so she would not reveal methamphetamine activity in her neighborhood.

Investigators had interviewed Stockelman early on because he matched the description of a man seen with the girl. Then another man told police that he was involved in the murder. That confession was eventually shown to be false as evidence pointed investigators back to Stockelman and DNA from the crime scene was found to match his.

A message seeking additional comment left Thursday for an Indiana Department of Correction spokesman was not immediately returned.

    Inmate Tattooed With Child Victim's Name, NYT, 28.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Girl-Slain-Tatoo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Search Continues for 6 Prison Inmates

September 21, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LA VILLA, Texas (AP) -- Investigators questioned relatives of six escapees from a South Texas jail and trolled the fugitives' known hangouts as the hunt for the men stretched into a third day Thursday.

Investigators said they were working nonstop to find five alleged members of a violent drug gang and a former police officer about to face trial on drug charges. All escaped from a privately run federal jail near the Mexican border late Tuesday.

The men overpowered a guard and cut through several fences to escape, officials said. The fugitive group was thought to have split up but the men probably remained in South Texas, said Deputy Joe Magallan of the U.S. Marshals Service.

''The investigators still believe they're here within the country,'' Magallan said late Wednesday.

More than 60 local and federal law-enforcement officers using helicopters and bloodhounds searched Wednesday near the East Hidalgo Detention Center, about 20 miles north of the border.

A four square-mile security perimeter was set up around the area during the initial investigation but was later lifted.

Officers searched door-to-door Wednesday, residents were asked to stay home with their doors locked, La Villa schools were searched by the sheriff's department and closed for the day, and a highway near the detention center was shut down.

''A lot of people are scared. They canceled school and everything,'' said Raul Castillo, a 26-year-old clerk at a Quick Mart in this town of 1,300 about 220 miles south of San Antonio.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said in a press release that the men were likely picked up in a vehicle on state Highway 107, which runs in front of the facility.

''This conclusion was arrived at because the 'hot trails' tracked by the bloodhounds all led to the roadway where the scent stopped,'' the statement said.

Among the escapees was former McAllen police officer Francisco Meza-Rojas, whose trial was scheduled to begin Oct. 3 on federal drug trafficking charges. The other escapees were illegal immigrants from Mexico alleged to be members of Raza Unida, a violent drug gang.

Authorities determined that the inmates gained access to several exit doors after overpowering a guard with a homemade knife and locking him in a room, then used ''some sort of wire cutter'' to breach the fence lines, the statement said. No alarm was sounded.

The guard was not injured, Trevino said.

''We're considering all six individuals very dangerous and armed,'' Trevino said.

The facility is a minimum-to-maximum security unit with 950 beds, about 800 of which are federal. LCS Corrections Services Inc., of Lafayette, La., bought the jail about five years ago.

Magallan said authorities had received some reports of sightings of the escapees, but none were confirmed. Investigators interviewed the fugitives' families, friends and acquaintances, he said.

''We have requested for Mexican authorities to assist us in the investigation,'' he said. ''Right now we don't have too much information on the family members in Mexico.''

Associated Press writer Jeff Carlton in Dallas contributed to this report.

    Search Continues for 6 Prison Inmates, NYT, 21.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Inmates-Escape.html

Time Served

Help for the Hardest Part of Prison: Staying Out

August 12, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In April, Debra Harris took her 15-year-old son along for what she thought was a final visit to her parole officer. Instead, because of a “dirty urine” test two weeks before, proof of her relapse to crack use, state troopers led her straight back to prison for three more months.

Troopers then drove Ms. Harris’s son to the rented home on the south side of Providence where her boyfriend was suddenly left to tend to three of her children. Ms. Harris had forgotten to pay the gas bill, so service was cut and they lived through her sentence without a stove, surviving on fast food and microwave items.

Such jolting events are part of the fabric of life in South Providence, as some women and many more men cycle repeatedly through the state’s prisons. As the country confronts record and recurring incarcerations, the search for solutions is focusing increasingly on neighborhoods like it, fragile places in nearly every city where the churning of people through prison is intensely concentrated.

Rhode Island is among the states beginning to make progress in easing offenders’ re-entry to society with the goal of bringing the revolving door to a halt, or at least slowing it. But sometimes it can be hard to see much of a difference.

The 1980’s and 90’s were an era of get-tough, no-frills punishment; inmate populations climbed to record levels while education and training withered. Prisoners with little chance of getting a job and histories of substance abuse were sent home without help.

Now a countertrend is gathering force, part of an unfolding transformation in the way the criminal justice system deals with repeat offenders. After punishment has been meted out and time has been served, political leaders, police officers, corrections officials, churches and community groups are working together to offer so-called re-entry programs, many modest in scope but remarkable nonetheless.

Inmates now meet with planners before their release to explore housing, drug treatment and job possibilities. Once the inmates are back outside, churches and community groups have been enlisted to take them by the hand and walk them through the transition home.

“What we’re witnessing is a great turning of the wheel in corrections policy,” said Ashbel T. Wall II, the Rhode Island corrections director.

The flood of more than 600,000 inmates emerging from the nation’s prisons each year, and the dismal fact that more than half of those will return, plays out relentlessly here, as elsewhere, keeping already troubled families in emotional and financial turmoil. Even with the new programs, the odds against staying straight are formidable.

“There’s a lot starting to happen,” said Sol Rodriguez, director of the Family Life Center, established in South Providence in 2003 to help returning prisoners and their families. “But this is still a very poor community, and people are coming back into already overburdened neighborhoods.”

In South Providence, where many families share aging two-story wood houses on deceptively quiet streets, nearly one in four male residents, and half of all black men, are under the supervision of the State Corrections Department — in prison, on parole or, by far the most common, on probation, Mr. Wall said.

Eight miles away, the state prison complex is an almost palpable presence. Of some 3,500 inmates released each year, one-fourth return to a core zone of South Providence of just 3.3 square miles with 39,000 residents, most of whom are Hispanic or black.

“One day somebody is just missing in action,” said Rev. Jeffery A. Williams, pastor of the 800-member Cathedral of Life Christian Assembly in South Providence. “The father gets a three- or five-year sentence, and the family structure disintegrates. Mothers try to survive on state aid or work multiple jobs, and you see kids practically raising themselves, which perpetuates the problem.”

The strains on families take many forms. Not far from the Harris household, Alberto Reyes, 27, a forklift operator, was put on probation last winter for burglary. But in March, Mr. Reyes failed to meet his parole officer and was sent to prison for three and a half months. Without his help, his girlfriend, who makes just $280 a week as a nurse’s aide, was left in desperate straits, he acknowledged, and had to rely on charity to get summer clothes for their baby.

Erick Betancourt, 26, spent 2 years in prison for dealing crack and will be on probation for the next 10 years, leaving him vulnerable to confinement for any mistake. “Everybody you bump into is on probation or parole,” said Mr. Betancourt, who has landed a job counseling youths in the streets.

“You’re not supposed to hang out with others on probation,” he said. “So you want to go back with your old friends, but that can be dangerous, because if the police stop you, that could be a violation.”

For Cerue Williams, 61, the repeated jailing of her 34-year-old son on drug and probation violations is causing financial burdens and social isolation. Laid off from her job engraving school rings, Ms. Williams is scraping by as she cares for her son’s teenage daughter.

Ms. Williams lives in a neat, rent-subsidized house, but she never talks with her neighbors. “I keep this inside, it’s embarrassing,” she said. “Nobody visits me, and I don’t visit nobody.”

South Providence is cut off from the city’s downtown and prosperous east side by an Interstate highway. Young men drive with their seats folded far back, their faces concealed behind the doorjamb — a fashion and a mock protective measure.

Parts of the area are gentrifying, and a Hispanic influx has brought small shops to the avenues. In abandoned jewelry factories, vacant lots and a few low-rise housing projects, roaming teenagers stir trouble with drugs, but the community’s woes are mostly hidden inside wooden multifamily homes.

Tyrone McKinney, 45, has been in prison 9 or 10 times since 1979 — he is not sure at this point — on charges ranging from shoplifting to attempted murder.

The last time Mr. McKinney was released, in January, he said, “they gave me a bus token, and I went out into the belly of the beast with no job, nowhere to go.”

Drifting through homes of South Providence, he resumed using drugs and stealing and was back in prison by April, for six months. He spoke in the prison gym, where he has bulked up over the years.

As a condition of his discharge this fall he must go into a residential drug treatment program, where he will also get help applying for benefits like food stamps and finding work and a longer-term home.

“The goal now is to see if you can rehabilitate lives instead of just locking them up,” said Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican, using words that once may have seemed politically risky. Mr. Carcieri has directed state agencies involved with education, drugs, mental health, housing and other issues to work with current and former prisoners.

Following an example set by Connecticut, Rhode Island has pledged to reinvest any savings from reduced prison populations in new aid for departing inmates.

Mayor David N. Cicilline of Providence has assembled a re-entry council, bringing together the police chief, religious leaders, businessmen and other community leaders. The council seeks to offer aid to every offender returning to the most affected neighborhoods, like South Providence.

In Washington, in another sign of the shifting national mood, the Second Chance Act, a bill to increase federal financing for re-entry programs, is moving through Congress with strong bipartisan support and the endorsement of the White House.

With its joining of public agencies and community groups, Rhode Island is part of a movement that is taking hold in dozens of states, said Debbie A. Mukamal, director of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Yet in Rhode Island, as elsewhere, money and facilities, especially to support people once they return to the community, have not caught up with the new goals.

Inside the prison, offenders have more access to education, skills training and counseling. But many who are approved for parole must still spend extra months behind bars, waiting for drug treatment beds to open up. Those with no homes to return to face a severe shortage of transitional housing.

“Discharge planning doesn’t always mean a lot because there are still so few services out here,” said Ms. Rodriguez, of the Family Life Center.

Most days, recently freed inmates drop into the center to check job notices, join counseling sessions or enroll in G.E.D. classes. The center is also, with the aid of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national nonprofit group, developing 25 units of permanent housing for troubled former offenders, and it successfully lobbied the state to stop barring former drug offenders from receiving food stamps.

Two weeks after his release, Mr. Reyes, the convicted burglar, was scouring job listings at the Family Life Center. “I have to get a job soon or I might have to go back to jail,” he said, noting that employment was a condition of his release. Like many other former prisoners, he cannot live with his girlfriend and son because she is in public housing that bans felons, so he is staying with his mother.

Social services are vital, but nothing can substitute for personal will, said Ms. Harris, 47, the mother who returned to prison after a parole violation. Before that, she had been imprisoned three times over the years for shoplifting.

She was released on parole again on July 26 with an ankle bracelet to ensure that she stayed inside her home except when explicitly permitted to leave.

“I lost too much over the years,” she said the day after her release, in the two-story home with a small backyard she cherishes but cannot sit in now without permission. She held a grandson as teenagers raced in and out, and she awaited the return of two younger children, who had moved in with their father during her months away.

“I knew this time that I didn’t want to lose all this,” she said, referring to her house, her children and her boyfriend, Victor, who stuck with her.

In prison, she started a 12-step program. Now, as a condition of her freedom, she must attend a three-hour recovery meeting at least three times a week. She has also been given a job, as an assistant to a church leader.

Ms. Harris fingered the black plastic bracelet with a transmitter on her ankle and said, “In some ways I feel like I’m back in the same old spot.”

But the bracelet also offered a strange comfort. “It kind of keeps my life structured for now,” she said, noting that she saw a drug transaction through her front window her first evening home.

“It’s crazy out there,” she said.

    Help for the Hardest Part of Prison: Staying Out, NYT, 12.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/us/12reentry.html?hp&ex=1155441600&en=f2b5f39bf439bc47&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Prison Disciplines Inmate Who Paints With M&M’s

August 4, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

A prison artist in California who uses the dye from M&M’s for paint has been disciplined for what a prison official yesterday called “unauthorized business dealings” in the sale of his paintings. The prison has also barred the prisoner, Donny Johnson, from sending his paintings through the mail.

Mr. Johnson’s work has been on display for the last several weeks at a gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Twenty of his paintings have been sold, for $500 each.

Mr. Johnson had donated the paintings to the Pelican Bay Prison Project, a charity which says it will honor Mr. Johnson’s wish that it use the proceeds from the show to help the children of prisoners.

According to a “serious rules violation report” issued by the prison last month, Mr. Johnson ran afoul of a corrections department regulation that prohibits engaging in a business or profession without the warden’s permission. The regulation defines a business as “any revenue-generating or profit-making activity.”

Francisco Jacquez, the chief deputy warden at Pelican Bay State Prison, in Crescent City, Calif., said the violation could extend Mr. Johnson’s sentence or restrict his privileges. “There are some consequences, and that’s what we use to maintain discipline in prison,” Mr. Jacquez said, declining to be more specific.

Stephen A. Kurtz, a founder and director of the charity, said the discipline was unwarranted. “He wasn’t doing business,” Mr. Kurtz said of Mr. Johnson. “He was simply making a donation. He didn’t make a penny off this.”

The discipline was prompted by a front-page article about Mr. Johnson in The New York Times last month, according to the violation report. Pamela B. Hooley, a deputy attorney general, sent a copy of the article to prison officials on the day it appeared, the report said.

Mr. Johnson, who is 46, is serving three life sentences. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 1980 for a drug-related killing, drawing a sentence of 15 years to life. In 1989, he was convicted of slashing the throat of one guard and assaulting another. Those crimes resulted in two additional sentences of nine years to life.

He has been in solitary confinement in a small concrete cell for almost two decades. He paints with a brush he created with plastic wrap, foil and his own hair. He makes paint by leaching the colors from M&M’s in little plastic containers that once held packets of grape jelly. His canvases are postcards.

It is not clear whether the prison will stop Mr. Johnson from creating paintings. In a recent postcard to his mother, Mr. Johnson wrote that prison officials have stopped him from mailing his art to his family, friends and supporters.

A lawyer for Mr. Johnson, Charles Carbone, said he was considering bringing a legal challenge.

The United States and California Supreme Courts have struck down laws that would have prohibited people convicted of crimes from profiting from them. But courts have been reluctant to interfere with prison administration, even where First Amendment issues are involved. In June, for instance, the United States Supreme Court upheld a Pennsylvania prison policy that denied access to newspapers and magazines to some inmates.

    Prison Disciplines Inmate Who Paints With M&M’s, NYT, 4.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/04/us/04artist.html?hp&ex=1154750400&en=eb8af073a23a7c4b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Immigration Enforcement Benefits Prison Firms

July 19, 2006
The New York Times
By MEREDITH KOLODNER

As the Bush administration gets tougher on illegal immigration and increases its spending on enforcement, some of the biggest beneficiaries may be the companies that have been building and running private prisons around the country.

By the fall of 2007, the administration expects that about 27,500 immigrants will be in detention each night, an increase of 6,700 over the current number in custody. At the average cost these days of $95 a night, that adds up to an estimated total annual cost of nearly $1 billion.

The Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group (formerly the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation) — the two biggest prison operators — now house a total of fewer than 20 percent of the immigrants in detention. But along with several smaller companies, they are jockeying for a bigger piece of the growing business.

Corrections Corp. and Geo are already running 8 of the 16 federal detention centers.

With all the federal centers now filled and the federal government not planning to build more, most of the new money is expected to go to private companies or to county governments. Even some of the money paid to counties, which currently hold 57 percent of the immigrants in detention, will end up in the pockets of the private companies, since they manage a number of the county jails.

“Private companies are positioning themselves as suppliers, and are positioned to take the majority of new beds available,” said Anton High, an analyst with Jefferies & Company, the brokerage firm. He has recommended that his clients buy Corrections stock.

Louise Gilchrist, vice president for marketing and communication at Corrections Corp., said her company would have no trouble meeting the federal government’s needs. “We believe as their demand increases, they will need to rely on providers who have bed space available,” she said. “The company feels it is well positioned.”

Wall Street has taken notice of the potential growth in the industry. The stock of Corrections Corp. has climbed to $53.77 from $42.50, an increase of about 27 percent, since February when President Bush proposed adding to spending on immigrant detention.

Geo’s stock rose about 68 percent in the period, to $39.24 a share from $23.36.

The increasing privatization of immigrant detention has its critics. Immigrant advocates say health care at some centers has fallen short. They contend that some centers have treated immigrants as if they are criminals — restricting their movements unnecessarily, for instance — even though many are still awaiting a ruling on their legal status.

Because those who cross the border illegally are not considered criminals, they are not automatically assigned a lawyer. But, the advocates say, there have been repeated instances when immigrants have not had access to working phones to call for legal assistance.

“Private prisons have unleashed an entrepreneurial spirit in this country that is unhealthy,” said Judith Greene, director of the nonprofit research group Justice Strategies. “Standards are violated on a regular basis in order to cut costs.”

The companies counter that they are living up to their contractual obligations. “If you develop a reputation as a company that cuts corners, you will lose your contracts,” said Steve Owen, director of marketing at Corrections. The allegations, he added, “are completely false.”

Immigration experts say the need for more prison space is not a result of an increase in the number of people entering the United States illegally. According to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, the number of unauthorized immigrants arriving in this country is down by about 50,000 a year from the late 1990’s.

Instead, the increase in spending on detention is part of a crackdown on illegal residents living in the United States as well as an expected increase in the number of immigrants captured as they try to cross the border.

The government also plans to detain more immigrants, especially those from countries other than Mexico, while they await their hearings, instead of releasing them on their own recognizance. This effort to end what is known as “catch and release” means more capacity is needed immediately.

“The issue is not how many immigrants,’’ said Joe Onek, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Institute. “There’s incredible pressure on the administration from members of its own party and from some sectors of the population to crack down.”

Revenues for the prison management companies will grow not only because of the rising number of detainees, but also because profit margins are higher at detention centers than prisons, analysts say.

Last year, the Correction Corp.’s revenue from holding immigrants jumped 21 percent, to $95 million from $70 million in 2004. Geo, the second largest prison operator, received $30.6 million last year, about the same as the year before.

While the companies would not comment on profit margins from their immigration business, Wall Street analysts said that detention centers produce profit margins of more than 20 percent.

That compares with margins in the mid-teens for traditional prison management, they said, because prisoners are provided with more costly services like high school degree programs and recreational activities.

Even with the expected growth in the number of immigrant detainees, the main source of income for the private prison companies will continue to be revenue from state and federal governments for housing regular inmates.

The state and local prison population totaled more than 1.5 million last year, with about 100,000 of those held in privately managed prisons. But the number of state and federal inmates rose by just 1.4 percent from June 2004 to June 2005, slower growth than the average 4.3 percent annual increases from 1995 to 2000.

By contrast, the number of immigrants in detention is expected to increase by about 20 percent over the next three months alone.

Federal immigration contracts generated about $95.2 million, or 8 percent, of Correction Corp.’s $1.19 billion in revenue last year, and about $30.6 million, or 5 percent, of Geo’s $612 million total income.

In the first quarter of 2006, Corrections Corp.’s detention revenue rose to $25.5 million. The federal immigration agency is now the company’s third-largest customer, after the federal Bureau of Prisons and the United States Marshals Service.

The detention market is projected to increase by $200 million to $250 million over the next 12 to 18 months, according to Patrick Swindle, a managing director at Avondale L.L.C., an investment banking firm that has done business with both Geo and Corrections Corp. He said that a company’s capacity would play an important role in how much of the market it would be able to capture.

The company “currently has 4,000 empty beds in their system,” Mr. Swindle said. “They are bringing on an additional 1,500 beds within the border region.’’

“Reasonably, about 3,000 to 4,000 beds could be made available” for immigrant detention, he said.

Having empty cell space that can be made available quickly is considered an advantage in the industry since the government’s need for prison space is often immediate and unpredictable. Decisions about where to detain an immigrant are based on what is nearby and available. Immigration officials consider the logistics and cost of transportation to the detention center and out of the country.

“We can use the beds whenever and wherever we like,” said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We are funded for a certain number of beds but there are many beds around the country that are available and it depends where and when we need them if we use them.’’

While companies do not release how much space they currently have available, analysts estimate that Geo has about 1,500 empty places. To increase capacity, the company announced in June that it was building a 576-inmate expansion of the 875-inmate Val Verde Correctional Facility it owns in Del Rio, Tex.

George C. Oley, Geo’s chief executive, said in a statement at the time of the Val Verde announcement: “We are moving forward with the expansion of this important facility in anticipation of the expected increased demand for detention bed space by the Federal Government.”

Despite the two companies’ dominance, they face competition from smaller players in the corrections business. A new federal detention center set to open in Texas at the end of July will be run by the Management and Training Corporation, a privately owned company based in Utah.

The Cornell Companies, based in Texas, currently operates two centers that hold detainees. It is the third-biggest private corrections company, though significantly smaller than Corrections Corp. and Geo, controlling just 7 or 8 percent of the market, according to Mr. Swindle.

“What’s great about the detention business,” Mr. High of Jefferies said, “is not that it’s a brand-new channel of demand, but that it is growing and significant.”

    Immigration Enforcement Benefits Prison Firms, NYT, 19.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/business/19detain.html?hp&ex=1153368000&en=be2dc3fdbe7c848d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. Agent Dies in Shootout With Prison Guard

June 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., June 21 — A federal agent was killed and a prison officer wounded Wednesday in a shootout with a guard at a federal prison here. The guard, who was about to be arrested in connection with a sex ring, also died in the gun battle.

The guard, Ralph Hill, was one of six who were indicted Tuesday, accused of giving contraband to female inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in exchange for sex and money. The low-security prison houses about 1,400 women on the eastern edge of Tallahassee.

Agents from the Justice Department inspector general's office were serving warrants on the guards just after 7:30 a.m. when Mr. Hill pulled out his personal gun and began firing just outside the main entrance of a smaller detention center next to the prison, according to the Justice Department. He killed Special Agent William Sentner, 44, and seriously injured a lieutenant at the prison who was helping with the arrests.

Mr. Sentner is the first special agent from the Justice Department inspector general's office to be killed or wounded in the line of duty, a spokeswoman for the office, Cynthia Schnedar, said. The office has about 120 special agents with the same arrest powers as F.B.I. agents and other federal investigators.

On Tuesday, a Federal District Court grand jury in Tallahassee indicted the six guards on charges of conspiracy to commit acts of bribery, witness tampering, mail fraud and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering. The charges, a result of a joint investigation by the inspector general's office, the F.B.I. and the federal Bureau of Prisons, carry maximum sentences of 20 years in prison.

The indictment said that starting in 2003, five of the six guards — Mr. Hill, Alfred Barnes, Gregory Dixon, Alan Moore and E. Lavon Spence — traded contraband for sex with at least 10 inmates. At other times, it said, they sold contraband to inmates or used it to bribe them to keep silent.

Federal officials would not say what kind of contraband was involved, but the indictment suggested it could have included alcohol, drugs, food or anything else not available at the prison commissary.

To further keep the inmates from telling anyone, the guards also monitored their phone calls and threatened to have them sent to other prisons farther from their families, according to the indictment.

The sixth guard, Vincent Johnson, is said to have conveyed messages between inmates and one of the other five guards, and showed inmates the Bureau of Prisons computer system, presumably as a threat that they could be tracked once they were released.

Michael Folmar, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Jacksonville, said the guards had been unaware of the indictments and had no advance warning of the arrests.

But Timothy Jansen, a lawyer for Mr. Hill, said the guard hired him last fall after hearing rumors of an investigation. Mr. Jansen said that Mr. Hill had submitted a saliva sample for DNA testing in January, but had not heard anything from federal investigators since then.

Mr. Folmar said it was standard procedure for agents from the inspector general's office to make arrests.

"These agents were out just trying to do their jobs," he said. "They were trying to make arrests in a very controlled situation, and it just didn't come down as planned."

Mr. Folmar said guards were not allowed to bring personal weapons into the prison. He would not provide details about the deaths, saying that a review team from Washington would start to "piece all this together" Thursday morning. He also would not identify the Bureau of Prisons lieutenant injured in the shootout, but said the lieutenant was expected to recover fully.

Each of the five surviving guards pleaded not guilty during an early afternoon arraignment in federal court here. Still dressed in their uniforms of white shirts and gray pants, they showed no emotion as they sat beside their court-appointed lawyers.

The defendants were ordered held in federal custody at an undisclosed location pending a hearing Thursday.

Trial was set for Aug. 21 before Chief Judge Robert L. Hinkle of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Mr. Jansen, the lawyer hired by Mr. Hill, said he had never had "any indication that my client was a violent person." Mr. Hill received an honorable discharge from the Air Force, he said, and had worked at the federal prison for 12 years.

Mr. Dixon's lawyer, Thomas Findley, suggested that some inmates might have made false accusations about the guards in the hope of getting their sentences reduced.

Teri Donaldson, the lawyer for Mr. Spence, said his client was "not anywhere near the shooting and had absolutely nothing to do with those events."

Several family members of the surviving guards, meanwhile, said they were surprised by the charges and could not imagine the men capable of such acts.

"We wouldn't expect anything like this from him," said Vincent Johnson Jr., 22, Mr. Johnson's son, adding that his father had worked at the prison for at least six years. "He was a good guy for the most part, or so we thought."

Mr. Moore's sister, Angela Moore of Conyers, Ga., said her brother was a deacon at his Baptist church and had never before been in trouble. He is married, has a son in college and has worked at the prison for at least a decade, she added.

"My brother is a good person, and I know him well enough to know he would never do anything like that," Ms. Moore said in a telephone interview. "He counsels people to do right. All those accusations are false."

Armando Garcia, the lawyer representing Mr. Barnes, described him as a "family man" from Thomasville, Ga., about 35 miles north of Tallahassee. He said his client was not guilty.

"He's a god-fearing, churchgoing married man with children who works hard," Mr. Garcia said. "He owns his home. He drives back and forth to work every day. He does what he's supposed to do."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Joe Follick and Christine Jordan Sexton in Tallahassee, Terry Aguayo in Miami and Scott Shane in Washington.

    U.S. Agent Dies in Shootout With Prison Guard, NYT, 22.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/us/22prison.html?hp&ex=1151035200&en=2894b52d094e0fcb&ei=5094&partner=homepage