On Thursday, October 8, 2007, a group of about thirty RWC criminal justice students went to the Lebanon Correctional Facility in Ohio to learn the ins and outs of a real prison riot. They personally portrayed the inmates while the professors observed.Professor Joe Zurad teaches here at RWC and also inspects various prisons to see if their conditions are up to standards. A correctional officer (C.O.) who knows Prof. Zurad through his work, asked if any of his criminal justice students would like to participate in a mock prison riot. After Marilyn Simon, also an RWC Criminal Justice professor, heard of the activity, she included a few of her students to take the trip as well.
A few weeks prior to entering this maximum-security prison, the students had to submit to criminal background checks. They also could not be related to or affiliated with any of the prisoners or they would not be permitted to go inside.
After entering the prison, both the students and professors had to go through an intense security check. They had to take off shoes and lift up their pant legs, and even Prof. Simon was told to take barrettes out of her hair. They were then led in groups of 4-6 to a “sally-port,” which is a sort of no-man’s land in the prison, where there is one way in and one way out.
When everyone was through, the C.O.’s gave them all instructions on what they would be doing and assigned them to different areas of the “tag shop,” which is the place inside the prison where inmates make license plates for the State of Ohio. The C.O.’s then taught them how to make shanks, the weapons prisoners make out of ordinary objects. Using actual license plates, they molded and bent them into sharp weapons.
Once the students were given inmate jackets and positioned in the tag shop, the riot, or “sit-down strike” as the C.O.’s prefer to call it, began. Prof. Simon said the students began yelling for pizza and demanding higher wages for making license plates. Although she said the strike took “longer than expected,” it was still a good practice exercise for the correctional officers. The staged riot was also a good way for the officers to learn how to handle high-pressure situations.
Around 2 p.m., when everyone began to file out of the tag shop, the students and professors got a big surprise: about two dozen members of the Special Respone Team (SRT) dressed in all black told every person to lie on the floor and “put our hands behind our back and noses on the ground,” recalls Prof. Simon. The men were armed with pepper spray and real, although unloaded, rifles. The SRT members are the hardcore enforcers of the prison and responsible for handling negotiations.
After a short tour of the prison, the criminal justice students were exhausted, and it was time to leave. When asked about the experience, Prof. Simon said she’d gladly have another class go to the prison for the exercise, but added about the whole day that “it’s definitely not TV.