The warden and a top supervisor at the Missouri's South Central Correctional Center in Licking have been replaced amid allegations contraband was entering the prison through a poorly screened gate, the Missouri Independent reports. Michele Buckner, a 25-year employee of the Department of Corrections, ended her employment with the department this week, said spokeswoman Karen Pojmann. Buckner was hired in 1999 and became warden in May 2019. Robert Hopping, ranked as a major, left last month. Hopping worked for the department for more than 20 years. Michael Shewmaker, warden at Ozark Correctional Center in Webster County, will be acting warden at South Central. He is a 25-year employee of the department. The South Central Correctional Center houses 1,601 inmates in minimum, medium and maximum security units.
Advocates who use staff, inmate and family sources to obtain information from inside prison walls said Buckner and Hopping were fired and walked out of the prison under supervision. “Everyone that I hear from, including current staff, former staff, and people who live there say that it is overrun with drugs and other contraband, that there is a lack of order, there’s a lack of policy being followed,” said Lori Curry of Missouri Prison Reform, an organization that advocates for prisoners and their families. “It’s basically the Wild West in there.” The department has a confidential hotline for employee reports of misconduct by staff. An investigation triggered by a hotline call “uncovered significant amounts of drugs and contraband at the facility,” Curry wrote in a social media post. “Employees were reportedly allowed to come and go freely through the back of the facility without checks or body scans, contributing to the influx of illegal items. There are “some inaccuracies in the claims” made in the post by Missouri Prison Reform, Pojmann wrote, but declined to give specifics.
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