Prison Riot Injury Attorneys

Unsafe Working Conditions

Unsafe prison workplaces are common in that they are inherently unsafe. There is a certain amount of risk involved for any individual who takes on the responsibility of being employed as a corrections officer or prison guard. But prisons have a duty, as all employers do, to ensure that the areas that their employees work everyday are free from unnecessary hazards and generally safe. This responsibility, it can be argued, extends in prison settings to include forcing prison staff to interact with dangerous inmates more than is completely necessary and ensuring that security measures that are in place are sufficient to protect their employees.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act states that every working American has the right to a safe and healthy work environment. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the federal agency created to enforce the Occupational Safety and Health Act. OSHA standards of safe working environments for all types of employment extend to correctional facilities.

Undue Risk

The most common injury to prison staff occurs because prison guards and other correctional officers are put into dangerous situations unnecessarily. All contact between inmates and prison staff is limited. At times when inmates are out of their cells, it is important that all safety procedures are followed to make sure that the inmates are guarded properly at all times. Having too many inmates out of their cells at one time, mistakenly giving them access to unauthorized areas, or putting them in closed quarters with unarmed prison staff personnel could all be situations in which injuries to prison employees can occur.

Allowing inmates access to restricted materials, including contraband from outside of prison walls, can also put prison workers at very serious risk. Household cleaning and kitchen supplies, for instance, can be used to make powerful poisons that can incapacitate and/or injure a prison guard. For this reason, materials such as these must be cataloged and restricted at all times.

Defective Prison Security Measures

Prisons are high security facilities. All of the rules and regulations inside of prison walls are designed with the safety of prison staff and inmates in mind. Most security procedures have been crafted over the course of many years, being altered to account for the types of scenarios that prison guards and inmates could likely face. As prisoners invent new ways to fashion weapons and create dangerous situations for prison staff and other inmates, it is important that security guidelines alter as well, to account for these changes. When they do not, the results can be disastrous.

'Lockdown' procedures and treatment of certain types of inmates also needs to be taken into account. Some inmates with medical conditions have a propensity to spit or expose prison personnel to dangerous bodily fluids. Other inmates have fixations with fire or other dangerous chemicals and cannot be treated with the same precautions as other inmates. The identification of these inmates who need to be handled with special care and the approved procedures with which they are to be dealt with are two variables that the prison system must account for. Failing to do so can be viewed as the prison not providing a safe work environment for their employees.

If you are a prison guard who has been injured due to unsafe or defective work conditions in the prison system, our unsafe prison working conditions attorneys can help. Contact us today to discuss your unsafe work environment case. We can help advise you of your rights under the law and help ensure that they are protected.

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