HOLDENVILLE, Okla. (AP) — Working as a prison guard in Oklahoma is becoming an ever more dangerous job as the state, with one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States, struggles with violence and understaffing at detention facilities. Long hours, dangerous conditions and remote, rural locations have meant fewer guards and a system plagued with increased killings and violence.
Three inmates were killed in separate incidents this year at the same private prison in rural, east-central Oklahoma where a correctional officer was fatally stabbed by an inmate over the summer, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Davis Correctional Facility, a 1,700-bed men’s prison in Holdenville operated by Tennessee-based private prison operator CoreCivic, has been operating at only about 70% of its contractually obligated staffing level, according to a 2021 audit of the facility provided to the AP after an open-records request.
Alan Jay Hershberger, a 61-year-old veteran correctional officer from Missouri who previously worked at a CoreCivic facility in Kansas, was traveling to Oklahoma to work at the prison for six-week stints at a time, according to his family. On July 31, Hershberger was supervising about 30 inmates in a recreation yard at the prison when 49-year-old inmate Gregory Thompson walked past him, pulled a 16-inch, homemade knife from his waistband and plunged it into Hershberger’s back, according to an affidavit from Oklahoma Department of Corrections investigator J. Dale Hunter.
“The victim immediately grabbed his side and quickly walked out of the A Unit South door toward a second correctional officer … and collapsed,” Hunter wrote. “The defendant followed behind the victim and began shouting, “On the set” and “On the Crips,” prison slang indicating the action is the responsibility of the Crips prison gang of which the defendant is a validated member.”