- Negotiation Team Responds to Prisoner Situation
- Resolution of Prisoner Protest
- Issues of Concern and Background on the Facility
According to the state’s Department of Corrections, members of a crisis negotiation team were present at the facility just south of Stillwater.
The case of 100 prisoners who refused to return to their cells in a U.S. prison was “resolved without incident”.
After an emergency lockdown, members of a crisis negotiation team were dispatched to the Stillwater Penitentiary in Minnesota on Sunday.
The special operations response team was deployed “out of an abundance of caution,” but the situation is now “calm, peaceful, and stable,” according to a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Corrections.
Due to personnel shortages, one unit’s inmates “expressed displeasure” when they were limited to their cells.
Bart Andersen, executive director of the union representing Stillwater’s correctional officers, described the incident as “endemic and illuminating the truth behind the chronic understaffing of the Minnesota Department of Corrections”
Advocates outside the Stillwater prison, some of whom have family members incarcerated, reported that inmates were exhausted by the excessive heat, lack of air conditioning, and limited access to showers and cold during intermittent lockdowns over the past two months.
A former inmate stated that the convicts’ actions were motivated by “self-preservation” due to the region’s dangerously high temperatures.
Sunday afternoon’s heat advisory predicted 37.7C (100F) temperatures at the site.
According to department statistics, there are just over 1,200 inmates at the facility southeast of Stillwater.
The 1914-built facility is the state’s greatest men’s institution with maximum security.
According to the Department of Corrections’ website, there are a total of seven living sections at the facility.
According to the facility’s website, its purpose is to offer educational, vocational, and industrial programming to incarcerated men.
