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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An Arkansas prisoner nearly died after guards left him in his own waste for a weekend, and while probing that incident corrections officials found that guards apparently received lap dances while on the job, documents obtained by The Associated Press show.

The prison system fired Lt. John Glasscock, who supervised guards on duty at the Tucker Unit, a maximum-security prison that formerly held Arkansas’ death-row inmates. One sergeant was fired, another was demoted and three others received written warnings, the documents say.

The report, stamped “Sustained (Allegation is True),” said Glasscock did substandard work “resulting in injury and/or property damage” and that he gave false information to investigators.

The disclosure of the incidents, described as a prisons spokeswoman as unprecedented, comes after two convicted murderers escaped a different state prison by wearing guard uniforms and officers at the Tucker Unit shot and killed a man who allegedly fled from a contraband checkpoint. Combined, the incidents raise new questions about a state prison system once described by a federal judge as a “dark and evil world.”

The internal affairs report, obtained by the AP through a state Freedom of Information Act request, shows guards discovered the inmate in “unsanitary” conditions on Jan. 19. By Feb. 10, the inmate had been taken to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, where he was placed on life support as he suffered through septicemia and septic shock, the report shows.

James Gibson, an internal affairs investigator for the state prison system, said no one tended to the inmate for an entire weekend in January.

“It was … discovered during the course of the investigation that during the weekend from Jan. 16 until Jan. 19, no one from the night shift or day shift from Friday until Monday morning did anything to clean up Inmate (redacted) or his cell,” Gibson wrote. “In fact, food trays were put in there on the bars for him to eat.”

Warden David White fired another sergeant involved, Bobby Lunsford, on Feb. 11. A telephone number for Lunsford could not be found. Gibson wrote in his report that Lunsford did not return messages left for him on a cellular phone.

By Feb. 20, an unnamed sergeant came forward to investigators, saying Glasscock spent “hours” with female officers in a prison office, the report shows. The sergeant also claimed a nurse performed a nighttime lap dance on Glasscock within the sight of several inmates.

During a later interview, the report says a voice stress analyzer indicated Glasscock answered a question about the lap dance deceptively.

The report also claimed a sergeant told investigators that inmates would “go into the officers’ mess and cook different food for the officers on the night shift.”

“He said sometimes they would do potlucks,” the report reads.

Glasscock denied the allegations against him, though he acknowledged he “messed up” by not doing rounds at the facility, the report shows. Records show Glasscock joined the prison system as a guard in November 1996 and never was demoted or had a disciplinary infraction previously, officials said.

A telephone number listed in Glasscock’s name rang unanswered Monday.

The maximum-security unit at Tucker, 30 miles southeast of Little Rock, currently holds 532 inmates, about 100 of them serving as workers and living in a barrack-style dormitory, said prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler. The other inmates either violated prison rules or have behavioral problems, she said.

The inmate who had smeared waste over his body later recovered and is now held at the state prison system’s Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff, Tyler said. She said the inmate suffers from mental problems and violated prison rules several times, including a few violent incidents.

“We have to clean it up as soon as we can, for his well-being and the well-being of everybody else. That simply was not done in a timely matter,” Tyler said. “That’s absolutely unacceptable.”

The Arkansas prison system, now nationally accredited, was declared unconstitutional four decades ago by U.S. District Judge J. Smith Henley. Then, armed inmate trusties policed others incarcerated. State police reports documented how inmates lived under brutal conditions.

Problems persist. In 2007, officials fired guards at the East Arkansas Regional Unit at Brickeys for using excessive force against inmates. Recently, convicted murderers Calvin Adams and Jeffrey Grinder escaped the Cummins Unit wearing guard uniforms made at the prison. Police caught them in upstate New York, where officers found them with badges that looked like staff identification.

Saturday, a guard at Tucker fatally shot a Heber Springs man wanted for failing to report to his parole officer. Officials said the man allegedly crashed his car into the assistant warden’s car and came “very close to the officers” before being shot.

Tyler said the department constantly trains its staff and cautioned against making connections between “three totally unrelated incidents.”

“I think what you’ve got here is a case of a couple of officers who were not doing their jobs up to their standards and we took appropriate action,” she said.

Lawmakers have scheduled a meeting with prison director Larry Norris in the coming weeks to discuss the recent prison escape. Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe, said the governor continued to support Norris’ work at the department.

“When things have gone wrong, action has been taken and that’s very important to us,” DeCample said. “If things were going wrong and no one seemed to be taking no action to fix it, that’s where we’d be greatly concerned.”

On the Net:

Arkansas Department of Correction: www.adc.arkansas.gov/