Such a danger was never more apparent than at Kirkland Correctional Institution on April 1, 1986. In the riot's opening stages, correctional officers in a housing unit reported to the control center that inmates, armed with hand-made shanks and garden tools from a facility shed, were breaking into the unit. Officers were arriving at the facility, but their numbers were insufficient to deploy a squad to rescue the trapped officers. When the number reached 35 (command had wanted at least 100), an assault force was dispatched to rescue the trapped officers. Once this was achieved, momentum was behind the riot squad and they began to clear the yard of inmates. (David Jensen, National Criminal Justice Reference Service.).
In contrast to the decisions made at Kirkland, prison administrators at Coxsackie Correctional Facility in New York on August 1, 1988 had a compelling reason to use force immediately because inmates were seen assaulting the guards. Coxsackie's Special Housing Unit's (SHU) high-security design, however, impeded quick access. Therefore, no immediate action was taken because the inmates threatened to kill the hostages if authorities tried to use force to resolve the situation, and officials could not have prevented this. In this instance, it deemed necessary to negotiate for the lives of the captive guards.
The second type of force used to suppress prison riots is a planned tactical strike. The objective of the tactical strike is to maximize the element of surprise. Prison administrators deploy staff in an attempt to release hostages or retake the facility before inmates can take their own course of action. The key elements to a planned tactical strike (in no particular order) are intelligence, drilling (or rehearsing), timing, command, weaponry, speed, and surprise.
Intelligence is of great importance. There is a continuous effort to gather intelligence. Released hostages are sometimes conferred with, and the information obtained from them is used to assess the inmates' leadership and the location of hostages.
