Prison Assaults

A death row inmate slashed a correctional officer at San Quentin State Prison on Wednesday, prompting a lockdown of the entire prison, authorities said. Inmate Richard Penunuri, 27, slashed the officer in the lower-left arm with a homemade razor-like weapon when the guard was removing Penunuri's handcuffs in his cell about 10:45 a.m., said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A man accused of killing three people and injuring at least 11 by plowing a car into a crowd of pedestrians on a Las Vegas Strip sidewalk has been accused of stabbing a jail guard in the neck with a pencil. Stephen M. Ressa, 27, of Rialto, Calif., was moved to an isolation unit at Clark County jail after the attack, which authorities said occurred while he was being ushered to his cell. The unidentified officer was not seriously hurt. Ressa already faces 30 felony charges in the Sept. 21 crash.

A bloody melee erupted Wednesday morning at an Iraqi-run prison after an inmate grabbed an officer's gun and began shooting, leaving up to 10 people dead and a dozen wounded. Iraqi security officials said that four guards, five prisoners and an interpreter were killed at the facility in northern Baghdad, and that a U.S. soldier -- probably one of the American personnel often placed at Iraqi military and police posts -- was among the wounded.

The superintendent of the state's most notorious youth prison will be removed for using unreasonable force against a ward and failing to report the incident, corrections officials said Thursday. Steve Kruse, superintendent at Stockton's N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility, has been on administrative leave since shortly after the May 27 incident. His appointment will be terminated Wednesday. His removal adds to the turmoil at the prison, which remains under federal investigation.

The U.S. Department of Justice released its first statistical report on prison rape and abuse Sunday, but acknowledged that much sexual violence in prisons was probably never reported. In a report required by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, the Justice Department's statistical arm measured sexual violence reported to prison authorities last year. The report said there were an estimated 8,210 incidents in the nation's prisons and jails, which hold about 2.1 million inmates.

Inmates beat and broke the jaw of a suspected Al Qaeda operative who is being held in Castellon, Spain, on charges that he helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., officials said. The Europa Press agency reported that prisoners accused Imad Yarkas, 42, a Syrian-born Spaniard, of being responsible for last year's train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people.

A jury award of $177,000 to a former Orange County jail inmate in 2003 was overturned this week by a state appeals court. The ruling, issued Wednesday, reversed a jury decision that awarded the money to Robert N. Carter of West Covina, who said deputies beat him several times while he was in jail. Jurors awarded $77,000 in compensatory damages from the county and $100,000 in punitive damages from Sheriff Michael S. Carona for failing to adequately supervise and train jail deputies.

A California prison guard has won a $10-million judgment against two inmates who attacked him at the state prison in Lancaster -- a major victory for a group of guards that has taken up targeting violent inmates in civil court. The judgment was entered by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge this month after the two defendants -- Gregory P. Gaines and Harold X. Wesley -- failed to adequately file formal responses with the court, said R. Rex Parris, an attorney for prison guard Demond Blunt.

Prisoners at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been beaten while blindfolded and handcuffed, terrorized by attack dogs and forced to take drugs, an Australian detainee said in an affidavit released Thursday. David Hicks, 29, was one of the first prisoners to arrive at the camp in eastern Cuba in January 2002.

Orange County jail officials have shown an indifference to violence against inmates by deputies, who call themselves "psycho crew" and "the untouchables," according to an inmate who is suing a second time alleging that he was beaten. Daniel Louis Parra, 36, who is awaiting trial for murder, states that in both incidents he was pulled out of a food line, taken down a stairwell out of the view of video cameras and beaten.