An assistant warden fired last week from a women’s prison in Florida apparently was intimate with numerous inmates, according to the Miami Herald. A 58-page report said female inmates at Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala referred to the warden, Marty Martinez, as “Daddy.'' Many visited his office each day, asking for favors like special bunk assignments, chocolates or time to liaison with their female partners. A Department of Corrections spokesman said Martinez “failed to conduct himself in a professional manner and acted inappropriately toward staff and inmates.''
Lowell corrections officers told the department's investigators that they were overruled, punished — and, in one case, even threatened — when they tried to discipline any of Martinez's favorites. Martinez is among 44 prison staffers who have been dismissed since new DOC Secretary Julie Jones took the helm of the embattled agency on Jan. 5. “Nobody ever caught him in the act, but we all saw him locked in there with them,'' a corrections officer, who gave a sworn statement to DOC investigators, told the paper. It would be a crime for a prison staffer to engage in sex with inmates.