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COLEMAN -- Two high-security federal prisons in Coleman and five others nationwide will be getting fences that can kill prisoners who touch them, a $10 million project intended to allow the prisons to operate with fewer perimeter guards. The 12-foot-high "stun-lethal" fences, similar to ones already used at some state prisons, can be set to deliver electrical shocks to prisoners who touch them once and fatal shocks if they are touched a second time. The federal Bureau of Prisons expects to award contracts for the fences in late fall, bureau spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said. "This new technology will serve as new security and help us to deter potential escapes [and] allow us to operate more cost-effectively by reducing the guard towers, the staffing at some of our guard towers," Billingsley said. Judy Freyermuth, executive director of the Federal Prison Policy Project, a nonprofit prison-reform advocacy group in Atlanta, predicted that the Bureau of Prisons' hoped-for savings will never materialize. "How many times have you read of an escape from a federal prison? None," said Freyermuth, who said she fears the fences will cause accidental injuries. Stun-lethal fences were pioneered in South Africa and used to protect utility buildings and other infrastructure, said Mike Allen, president of Crowley Company Inc. in Minneapolis. Crowley is part of a team of companies that is putting together a bid for the federal-prison job. "If they come up and attempt to make any kind of escape, they'll get kno ked on their tail end first, and it will literally knock them down because it's enough juice to do so," Allen said. "Theoretically, that would have knocked some sense into their head not to come at it again." The Bureau of Prisons plans to install the fences at prisons in Terre Haute, Ind.; Pine Knot, Ky.; Pollock, La.; Tucson, Ariz.; Hazelton, W.Va.; and two prisons in Coleman. The Bureau has told interested contractors it intends to spend more than $10 million putting the charged barriers between existing parallel chain-link fences. State prisons in Boscobel, Wis.; Sterling, Colo.; and Florence, Ariz., currently operate stun-lethal fences, and several states, including California, have lethal-only prison fences. The Colorado prison system said when the Sterling prison opened in 1999 that its fence would save $750,000 a year in guard costs. |
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