Southern Ohio Correctional Facility

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The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio, United States. The prison was constructed in 1972 and currently contains the death house for Ohio where death row inmates are executed. The current warden is Phil Kerns. The prison has 1,460 inmates as of March 2008.

1993 riot

On Easter Sunday, April 11, 1993, 450 Lucasville prisoners, including an unlikely alliance of the Aryan Brotherhood and Gangster Disciples, rioted and took over the facility for 11 days. The main causes apparently were serious overcrowding and mismanagement of the facility and discontent in the general population that the authorities were going to force Muslim prisoners to undergo tuberculosis vaccinations in violation of their religious beliefs. Investigations conducted after the riot found that the gangs were also collaborating to murder inmates accused of being informants. Nine inmates and one Corrections Officer, Robert Vallandingham, were killed. During negotiations, the inmates did not feel they were being taken seriously, and voted as a group to kill an Officer in retaliation. They handcuffed Officer Vallandingham, who they had taken hostage, and killed him by strangling him with a dumbell from the prison weight room.^[1] During those eleven days, representatives from the Sunni Muslims, Aryan Brotherhood, and Gangster Disciples met every day in an improvised leadership council.^[2] Following the events of the riots, all death row inmates at the facility were moved to a prison in Mansfield and later to the Ohio State Penitentiary a supermax facility in Youngstown.

A song based on the incident was written and recorded by Native American Folk singer and songwriter Steve Free entitled "Siege At Lucasville". Another song was writen by the Gypsy/Folk/Punk band Blackbird Raum, titled "Lucasville" that appears on their 3rd album Under the Startling Host.

Five prisoners were sentenced to death as a result of this incident: Bomani Shakur, Siddique Adbullah Hasan, Jason Robb and Namir Abdul Mateen. There is controversy as to whether these individuals were actually involved in the killing. Hasan acted as an imam for the population of Muslim prisoners, and some who believe that he was targeted for prosecution because of his religious beliefs.

References

1. ^ Pfeifer, Paul. The Lucasville Prison Riot, Supreme Court of Ohio, 2005-05-18. Accessed 2009-06-30.
2. ^ Lynd, Staughton, et. al. Wobblies and Zapatistas, p.113.

External links

• ODRC's Profile Page on SOCF
• Ohio Historical Society, 2005, "Lucasville Prison Riot", Ohio History Central: An Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History.
• FreeHasan.org
• Protest Demands Overturn of Lucasville 5 Convictions
• JusticeDenied.org Briefing Paper on the Lucasville Riot

Coordinates: 38°52′49″N 82°59′40″W / 38.88028°N 82.99444°W / 38.88028; -82.99444 (Southern Ohio Correctional Facility)

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