April 13



SOUTH CAROLINA:

An Oklahoma college professor and former director of the Oklahoma prison
system has been named director of the South Carolina Department of
Corrections.

Gov. Jim Hodges announced the appointment of Gary D. Maynard this
morning. Maynard takes over the 7,000-employee agency at a critical time.
The State Grand Jury is investigating allegations of sexual improprieties
between employees and inmates and the agency faces cutbacks of $40
million, which could lead to layoffs of 1,200 workers.

In addition, the corrections department has been under the supervision of
an interim director since mid-January after Hodges fired Doug Catoe, a
30-year veteran of the state prisons system. Hodges fired Catoe five
months after the first allegations were made public that employees had
sex with inmates and days after 2 guards were arrested for allegedly
allowing 4 inmates to have sex in the governor's temporary home and at
the Governor's Mansion, which was undergoing renovation.

Ten prison employees were arrested last year on charges of having sex
with inmates. In addition, the State Law Enforcement Division has opened
at least 118 cases of alleged wrongdoing by employees at more than half
the state's 31 prisons.

Maynard, a retired Army National Guard Brigadier General, starts work on
May 7. A native Oklahoman, he worked for 2 decades in the Oklahoma
corrections agency, beginning as an inmate release counselor at the
Thunderbird Treatment Center in Oklahoma City in 1970.

He was the warden at Oklahoma State Penitentiary, the state's only
maximum-security prison, from 1985 until he was appointed director of the
Oklahoma Department of Corrections in 1987. He worked in that post until
1992, when he was appointed adjutant general of the Oklahoma Military
Department. The retired 2-star general also was Oklahoma Cabinet
Secretary for Veterans Affairs from 1993 until 1995.

Maynard currently is the director of Corrections and Public Safety
Programs at the University of Oklahoma. He is the editor of the 13th
edition of "Correction Officer," a test-taking guide published by Arco
Publishing.

"The director of the Department of Corrections is one of the most
challenging jobs in the cabinet, and I have the utmost confidence in
General Maynard's ability to lead this agency," Hodges said.

Maynard has served on the Standards Committee of the American
Correctional Associations, where he wrote the standards governing adult
and juvenile boot camps.

He left Oklahoma in 1977 for the job of assistant director of the
Arkansas Department of Corrections. He returned to Oklahoma in 1980 to be
a warden at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center.

In 1988, a few months after he took over as director, approximately 80
inmates rioted at Mack Alford Correctional Center, taking 8 employees
hostage and destroying more than $7 million worth of property, according
to a history of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

The 3-day uprising ended when 10 participants freed the last 2
hostages and surrendered.

In 1990, he presided over the 1st execution in Oklahoma since the state
reinstated the death penalty 24 years earlier.

(source: The Greenville News)