Book Description

This work has been ten years in the making. The physical and emotional trauma inflicted during the time between April 11 and April 21, 1993 has left many scars. While most of the physical scars have long since faded, it is the emotional scars that have lingered. After 11 days of brutal captivity, two weeks of hospitalization, months of physical healing and therapy, seventeen post-riot trials, two strokes, a lay-off, and transfer to another agency, Larry Dotson is ready--ready to tell the story that has yet to be told, and ready to take the next step in the healing process. This book will not tell the complete story of the Lucasville riot. No single book can, because every hostage, staff member, inmate rioter, non-rioting inmate, their respective families, and all those assigned to SOCF during the riot, has a story to tell. No, this book will only tell the story of one of the hostages...Larry Dotson. Larry was working in an area in which he was not originally assigned, but because of the large number of staff "call offs" he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Following a severe beating while attempting to rescue a fellow staff member, Larry was brutally beaten and held hostage by two violent and rival gangs that put aside their differences and put forth a unified front in defiance of the prison administration...the administration that Larry represented. In the pages that follow, are the details that until now have been reserved for the administrators, investigators, lawyers, and juries. It is a story that all those who find themselves in a position of advocating budget cut backs, staff reductions, and a moderation of security, need to read and absorb. In 1993, Ohio ranked a pathetic last in inmate to correction officer ratio. Liberal federal court orders strengthened inmate's rights while compromising the safety and security of those who were responsible for carrying out the decisions. Those court orders, along with public apathy, budgetary, legislative, and executive shell games ignited the fuse that resulted in the longest and third most bloody prison riot in U.S. history. In 2003, Ohio finds itself sinking into the bowels of history, returning to the conditions that existed in 1993.