YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

May 1, 2003

Report No. 2003-41

The following problems were discovered as a result of an audit conducted by our office of the Department of Corrections, Western Missouri Correctional Center.

The Western Missouri Correctional Center (WMCC) opened in November 1988.� The facility is located on 385 acres one-half mile north of Cameron, Missouri and is a medium security facility.� This facility has a maximum capacity of 2,619 offenders who are housed in ten housing units.

The WMCC maintenance department uses a computer system to maintain a parts inventory valued at approximately $509,000.� This inventory contains numerous parts that are needed for repairs to the facility's buildings and equipment.� Offender workers are allowed inappropriate access to the computer system and are not properly supervised.� Offenders are allowed access to the computers so they can assist with data entry and develop database queries to generate monthly summary and detail reports.� Because these computers have access to the Department of Corrections (DOC) mainframe computer, these offenders potentially have access to offender records and various accounting records.� It was also noted that offender workers are not visible from the storekeeper's workspace and may not be observed for long periods of time.

Cell search policies and documentation need improvement. Although, the WMCC Standard Operating Procedure appears to indicate that each occupied offender area should be searched three times monthly, once on each shift,� WMCC facility personnel indicated they interpret the policy to require each offender cell or bay area bed to be searched once each month.� Furthermore, despite the standard search report form used, the various housing unit personnel were not consistent in their documentation methods.� As a result, it is not clear that all required cell searches were performed.

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