Norton Correctional Facility, Norton, Kansas
September 5, 2017
A version of this article was originally published on It’s Going Down
On Tuesday, September 5th, prisoners at the Norton Correctional Facility in Kansas took over portions of the prison and, according to the Kansas Organization of State Employees, which represents prison guards, staged a “huge riot.”
Emergency vehicles gather outside the Norton Correctional Facility during the uprising (Source: KWCH 12)
According to the Kansas City Star:
Inmates smashed windows throughout the Norton Correctional Facility. They took over staff offices and destroyed computers. They broke into the prison’s clinic and stole syringes. And some were wielding homemade weapons when correctional officers from three other prisons arrived at Norton to help restore order, according to multiple correctional officers.
Prisoners set multiple fires through out the prison in an uprising that, according to the Star, involved “400 or more inmates in the prison in northwestern Kansas that houses roughly 850.” According to the Washington Times, prisoners also “threw rocks, tried to run over a captain with a cart and were told they faced lethal force if they didn’t comply with commands.”
Another article, also by the Kansas City Star, states:
The log confirms correctional officers’ accounts about the state of disarray inside the Kansas prison: Inmates wrapped “large pieces of glass” in towels to use as weapons, they threw rocks at correctional officers, and they tried to devise a plan to charge the guards on duty.
“(Inmates) are trying to run over Capt. Crowder,” the log states. Another entry states that inmates had tipped over a medical response vehicle.
This uprising follows just a few months after another significant disruption at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas. This emerging pattern of instability within the Kansas prison system has lawmakers there scrambling to figure out how to reverse the trend. The debates have focused specifically on the new prison they are planning to build in Lansing, Kansas, in Leavenworth County just outside of Kansas City. Leavenworth County currently has seven prisons, one county jail and one youth detention facility in a county with a population of 79,000 people. Sounds like they really need another one, doesn’t it?
A version of this article was originally published on It’s Going Down