Group wants better conditions for teens in prison

ALTO, Ga. - Robert Leon Ware, a teen sentenced to 10 years in prison for vehicular homicide, soon will join the adult population at Lee Arrendale State Prison in northeast Georgia.

It's a process known as "crossing the yard," where the juveniles move across a recreation yard to other cellblocks.

"I stay to myself," said Ware, a 17-year-old from Savannah. "I don't talk to anybody if I don't know them."

Once a reform school for boys, this prison houses about 1,200 of the state's youngest felons, including 12 that are under 17. The youngest prisoner is 15 years old.

Like many of Georgia's prisons, this one can be very violent. Arrendale had the system's second-highest rate of violent disciplinary infractions last year, according to a Department of Corrections study. Only the prison in Reidsville - notorious for holding the state's most dangerous inmates - has a higher rate.

The Southern Center for Human Rights, an Atlanta-based group that works to clean up prisons, is hoping to help the younger prisoners at Arrendale.

"What are these young men going to be like when they leave prison and re-enter society?" said Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer for the center.

That worry is felt by Lynn Hembree of Acworth. Her 18-year-old son, Jason, is serving a three-year sentence for aggravated assault, and he has been forced to fight off rape attempts, according to his mother. She said Jason has bipolar disorder, and his experiences might make him "come out worse than he went in, or he's not going to come out at all," she said.

"The longer he stays in there, the less I have hope for him."

Geraghty's group compiled a partial lists of incidents at Arrendale in the past three years. They include rapes and other sexual assaults, beatings and stabbings. An 18-year-old inmate was raped and then strangled in his cell in February.

The warden, Tony Turpin, grew up in Habersham County, where Arrendale is located. He remembers the threats from his childhood - "If you do wrong, you'll go to Alto," he was told - and insists the prison is safer than it was in the past.

"It is not a dangerous, out-of-control facility," said Turpin, who's served as warden since 2002. "Do incidents occur? Sure they do."

He also doesn't dispute that these incidents can be violent. When asked about them, he showed the prison roster, complete with the crimes committed by some of the young inmates - murder, armed robbery, rape, kidnapping, aggravated child molestation, arson.

Statistics appear to support his theory that Arrendale is getting safer. The number of disciplinary infractions has dropped from about 8,000 to 3,200 in the past six years, and the violent infractions have been cut in half to 512.

Some of the inmates don't feel the assaults and rapes happen that often.

"It's really how you make it in here, how you carry yourself," said Anthony Q. Jernigan, a 16-year-old from Atlanta serving 10 years for aggravated assault and robbery.

Not everyone believes this. State Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta Democrat, sponsored a public hearing at the Capitol last week, where he and four other lawmakers heard from friends and relatives of the Arrendale inmates.

"It reinforces my view that Arrendale is out of control and that what you have there is a culture of brutality and violence," Fort said. "And that the understaffing, the low pay, the indifference of the people running the place has all come together to create an atmosphere that's out of control."

Prison officials have asked the National Institute of Corrections for recommendations on how to improve Georgia's prison system, including Arrendale. A shortage of guards is always a problem, and Turpin said he currently has 19 openings among his 300 officers.

What's worse, Geraghty said, is the prevailing "boys will be boys" attitude of prison officials.

"And that's an attitude that I find very disturbing when we're talking about the safety of young children."

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Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com