Deputy, Jail Officers Out After Staging Inmate Wrestling Matches: Sheriff

Three sheriff's office employees are out of their jobs after staging wrestling matches with three inmates in Ohio.

Security cameras captured the fights at the Fairfield County jail in June, according to Fairfield County Sheriff Alex Lape in Lancaster, Ohio. The sheriff told the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette that Deputy Shawn Pettit, corrections officer Kyle Archibald and corrections officer Landon Talbott staged the matches and wrestled the inmates for 10 minutes in the jail's confinement area.

"In 30 years I thought I'd seen just about everything," Lape told the newspaper. "I saw that video and I said you've got to be kidding. I don't know whether they [employees] took the bait of the challenge from the inmates. I don't know. I couldn't get really a direct answer on that."

Archibald and Pettit resigned before their pre-disciplinary hearings and Talbott was fired after his hearing. Talbott has filed a grievance that will soon go to arbitration, determining whether he will be reinstated. Another corrections officer, Kayla Doss, received a 10-day unpaid suspension for failing to report the incident right away.

An internal review of the incident was completed on September 16.

Lape said there were no injuries from the matches, which one of the inmates described as "purely consensual." The inmates and employees shook hands and hugged after wrestling. Lape contacted the Fairfield County Prosecutor's Office, but after interviewing the three employees and three inmates, the office declined to pursue criminal charges.

Still, the wrestling matches violated several of the sheriff's office rules of conduct.

"It's pretty obvious you can see how that could have gone bad in 100 different ways," said Lape. "It's unacceptable behavior and it's not going to be tolerated."

Physical and sexual violence are a common element of the U.S. prison experience, not only between inmates but also involving prison workers. According to a 2010 study from the Center for Mental Health Services and Criminal Justice Research, about 21 percent of male inmates were physically assaulted during a six-month period. While 19 percent reported being assaulted by other inmates, 21 percent said they were assaulted by prison staff.

Certain groups of people, including women and transgender individuals, suffer a higher risk of physical and sexual violence in prisons and jails. Transgender inmates are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. According to data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 39.9 percent of transgender people in U.S. prisons reported sexual assault or abuse by another prisoner or staff in 2011-2012, while 26.8 percent reported sexual assault or abuse in the country's jails.

Newsweek reached out to the Fairfield County Sheriff's Office for comment.