Protective Custody in Prison: How It Works and Why Some Inmates Need It

State and federal prisons have an obligation to keep all inmates safe during their time behind bars, yet some prisoners can become targets. Fellow inmates may turn on them due to their high profile or the nature of their crimes. As a security measure, prisons sometimes place at-risk inmates in protective custody.

Read on for a look at how protective custody works, the kinds of inmates who might need it and how prisoners feel about this type of incarceration.

Michael Benza, a professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that, despite differences between prison systems across the United States, there is common ground in how newly incarcerated people may end up in protective custody.

"What normally will happen is that every person who is being brought into a prison system will go through a screening process," Benza says. "Based on that screening process, they may make risk assessments about the need for this person to have some form of protective custody."

Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo seems to have followed this path. After pleading guilty to 13 murders in June 2020 and receiving multiple life sentences with no possibility of parole, on November 3, 2020, the former police officer entered North Kern State Prison, which has a temporary reception center for California state prisoners. DeAngelo was then transferred to the Protective Housing Unit at Corcoran State Prison on January 26, 2021.

Inmates can also go into protective custody at any point during their incarceration.

"Somewhere along the way, the individual may say, 'Hey, I've got this problem. I want protective custody,'" Benza explains. "The institution is then required to do an investigation to determine the degree of the risk and the need for protective custody."

Vladimir Taylor served as a corrections officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from 2020 to 2022 and tells A&E Crime + Investigation that when an inmate expressed safety fears and requested protective custody, it was referred to as "PCing up."

Benza explains that institutions generally don't automatically place specific classes of people, such as cooperating witnesses or sex offenders, in protective custody in prison.  “It is an individual determination that this particular person needs to have these extra security measures to keep them safe," he says.

Yet there are certain categories of incarcerated people who often require protective custody. "It could be that the person is a witness or a snitch," Benza says. "It could be that somebody is a very high-profile person—that may make them a target."

ABC7 Bay Area reported that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation considers inmate notoriety and the level of public interest in cases to help determine if prisoners are unable to safely live in general population housing. The reasons: Some notorious inmates are targeted for violence by other prisoners.

This is likely why Golden State Killer DeAngelo entered protective housing, but California corrections officials do not disclose DeAngelo's current location or whether he remains in protective custody.

A&E Crime + Investigation has previously reported that serial killer Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, may be housed away from other prisoners for his own safety. 

"Ridgway is someone who could be at risk for assault by other prisoners,” says John McCoy, a former reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and author of Concrete Mama: Prison Profiles from Walla Walla.

Washington State's Department of Corrections lists Ridgway as an inmate at Washington State Penitentiary, but officials did not respond to A&E Crime + Investigation's request for information about his protective custody status.

Taylor, the former Texas corrections officer based at the state’s Alfred D. Hughes Unit prison, had firsthand experience with prisoners in protective custody who included sex offenders and gang members.

“Sex offenders get really bad treatment in prison,” he says.

An inmate who was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang was transferred into protective custody because “there were so few of his gang in that unit that he wouldn't have anyone to stand up for him," Taylor says.

Inmates suffering from diseases they were not expected to recover from were also placed into protective custody while waiting for hospital beds to open up. Taylor says prisoners who owed money to other inmates that they could not pay “was a big one” when it came to reasons why inmates asked to go into protective custody.

The Hughes Unit was built for more than 2,000 inmates, but Taylor says there were not enough inmates needing protective custody for officials to “devote an entire or cell block to them.”

So those prisoners were put into what’s called administrative segregation, which can also be used to discipline inmates. Taylor describes it as “23 hours a day in your cell, one hour of rec."

Despite the restrictive nature of protective custody, Benza says it “is not punishment.”

"Even though you are in protective custody, you still have the other rights associated with being incarcerated,” he says. “You have the right to go to the library, those types of things."

At California’s Corcoran State Prison, inmates in protective custody receive "all the opportunities the regular population gets,” including classes and volunteer opportunities, prison spokesperson Lt. Justin McIntyre tells A&E Crime and Investigation.

Some prisoners desperately seek protective custody but prisoners also have the right to refuse it when they are offered it, Benza says. "Protective custody is sometimes onerous. It does tend to isolate.”

Prison officials also face criticism that they do not provide protective custody to inmates who need it, sometimes with deadly results for the inmates who did not get it.

"There is a fair amount of litigation at times, and complaints about institutions not acting quickly enough and people getting hurt or killed," Benza says.

At the Hughes Unit, regular cells house two men, but the administrative segregation cells are for one inmate.

“You're stuck in the cell for 23 hours a day,” Taylor says. “But ones who've been victims of violence or they owe money, they would be happy to be in protective custody away from it all."