It was business as usual yesterday at the only central Pennsylvania state prison that hasn't had a riot this week.
Two state prison disturbances in Huntingdon and Camp Hill have heightened awareness at the Rockview State Correctional Institution, but no problems have surfaced among the facility's 1,920 inmates, officials said yesterday.
"Things are going here by the normal institutional routine," Administrative Assistant Jack Allar said. "Of course, we're being observant. But everything' s going smoothly."
At least 42 people were injured Wednesday when inmates at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill took several guards hostage and went on an eight-hour rampage throughout the Cumberland County facility.
That disturbance arose after an inmate assaulted a guard that afternoon, and spread throughout the prison as dusk fell. Several state police helicopters and emergency vehicles assisted in quelling the uprising at the sprawling, Harrisburg-area compound.
On Monday, 29 employees at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, a maximum-security facility about 30 miles from here, were injured in an after-dinner fracas with inmates in Cell Block A.
Nineteen prisoners were injured in that disturbance.
"There do seem to be patterns of atypical events similar to the prison uprisings," said Lynne Goodstein, a University associate professor of administration of justice and a corrections expert. "They used to talk about urban riots occurring in clumps. (But) no social scientist knows the total answer."
Allar said earlier reports of a communications blackout at Huntingdon may have been inaccurate. The medium-security Rockview, he said, allows inmates liberal access to televisions, newspapers and telephones.
"If there's anything to this theory that the media can increase the probability of these events occurring, then Rockview's got to be on its guard," Goodstein said.
Allar said much of the prison population yesterday was aware of the tense situations at the two companion facilities.
"There's nothing extraordinary happening here," he said. "From the number of inmates I've talked to, many or maybe all of them know about it."
Last winter, nearly 20 staffers at Rockview were injured when a cafeteria disagreement ballooned into a fight. Several inmates await trials relating to that incident.
Camp Hill, the operations base for the Pennsylvania prison system, has not been in contact with Rockview for the simple reason that no disturbances were reported at the Benner Pike facility, Allar said.
"We haven't been involved with any difficulties, so there haven't been any special messages from them," he said.
Goodstein said overcrowding -- a problem State Corrections Department Spokesman Ken Robinson said plagues all Pennsylvania state prisons -- may be a factor in uprisings like those this week.
"There's the issue of increased emotional anxiety and less-than-sufficient goods and services when you have a crowded situation," she said. "You don't have the additional recreational facility areas, for example. These things, you can imagine, create problems."
