Fight Of His Life: Boxer Tyson May Face Violent Future If Jailed -- Indiana Prisons Rife With Brutality And Corruption

INDIANAPOLIS - Former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson may consider himself the "baddest man on the planet." But if a judge sends him to an Indiana prison for raping a beauty queen, he faces this warning from someone inside the system: "Tyson may be vicious, but we have guys in here who are barbaric."

Tyson will face Judge Patricia Gifford tomorrow in a sentencing hearing that could go several days. Gifford could sentence Tyson to prison, or could suspend all or part of his sentence because he has no other adult felony convictions. She also must decide whether he may remain free while his case is pending before the Indiana Court of Appeals.

If Gifford jails the former boxing champ, he will face a state prison system rife with brutality and corruption.

"He's a hero to some of these young guys, and he's going to be a leader," says Zackary Carr, 29, serving time for burglary and a parole violation at the Indiana Youth Center - a "high-medium security" prison.

"But there are guys in here who will run extortion on him," Carr said. "A left jab ain't going to get it. It would be flesh against steel."

Indiana's embattled prisons have been marked by violence and seethe with racial unrest. Inmate gang organizations for decades have controlled drug traffic, homosexual prostitution, protection rackets and contract murders.

Enforcers - lieutenants for gang leaders - employ rapes, beatings, stabbings and sometimes death to administer inmate law in a system that now incarcerates more than 14,500 criminals.

"We are in critical, but stable, condition," contends Indiana prison Commissioner James Aiken.

Aiken, a former South Carolina prison executive, inherited a system three years ago in which riots had sent inmates to their graves. His predecessor was convicted of felony theft.

Aiken says there is an eight-year plan to make the system more humane and safer. Drug testing of inmates, attempts to isolate predators and more refined classifications, he says, will improve the system.

But critics say Aiken has left in place longtime wardens and guards who maintain the status quo.

"We're finding 40 to 60 percent of the officers in the system are failing drug tests," one internal investigator said. "Nothing is being done about that."

Aiken insists that Tyson will be treated no differently than any other inmate, if and when he comes into this system.

But staff members already have examined Tyson's history of juvenile offenses and have predicted how he will be classified based on the length of the sentence he's likely to receive.

Inmates believe Tyson's high profile will make him a threat to gang leaders. And attorneys - such as John Emry, who has sued the state over prison conditions - say protective-custody cells are available but "it's really questionable how much protection inmates get."

At the Indiana Youth Center - a facility that houses both lifers and short-term offenders for which Tyson likely would be eligible - three black inmates raped a young white inmate last week. All four were placed "on lockup."

"Indiana's prison system stinks," says Richard Waples, who heads the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. "It's way overcrowded and its conditions of confinement have been repeatedly judged unconstitutional over cruel and unusual punishment.

"We fairly regularly are forced to bring these administrators back to court for violations of court orders. Believe me, if Mr. Tyson is incarcerated here, he's not going to find life very pleasant."

Others put it more bluntly.

"The toughest people could get significant reputations by beating up Mike Tyson," said Todd Clear, a criminal-justice professor at Rutgers University and a former consultant for the Indiana penitentiary system.

"Someone will want to make a name for himself on Mike Tyson," says James Bell Yager, a nationally known jailhouse lawyer serving more than 30 years in Indiana for bilking an Evansville, Ind., bank out of several thousand dollars.

"These institutions are all about manipulation of inmates. Tyson won't be any different."

Yager, who has filed or assisted in 19 federal lawsuits against Indiana prison conditions, says surveys by the Contact Center, a now-defunct federally funded institute on criminal justice, estimated in 1987 that 2,000 sexual assaults had occurred in 26 months against Indiana prison inmates.

Interviews with inmates and their families, with prison guards and civilian employees and with two high-level administration officials who talked on guarantees of anonymity, paint a picture of prisons still in chaos and headed for new upheaval.

At one of the state's two maximum-security prisons, Indiana State Prison at Michigan City, a lockdown was ordered last week after a stabbing prompted fears that other violence would erupt.

At the Indiana Reformatory - also maximum security - prisoners have been confined to their cells 24 hours a day and fed cold meals since last November, the longest lockdown in the prison's checkered 70-year history.

-- As a reporter for Indiana newspapers, Dan Luzadder spent more than 10 years investigating the Indiana prison system. Information from Associated Press and Reuters is included in this report.