COLUMBIA, S.C. - State prisons director Jon Ozmint said he wouldn't blame a bad budget or mistakes at the Corrections Department for a stabbing and hostage incident at the Lee Correctional Institute.

"We're not blaming budget cuts here, we're not blaming anybody except the inmates that committed these offenses," Ozmint said Thursday.

The responsibility for the five-hour hostage drama Wednesday night at the prison in Bishopville lies with 245 of the state's toughest inmates held in a maximum security prison housing unit watched over by three guards. Inmates end up there because they've caused problems in other prisons, Ozmint said.

One of the inmates involved in the uprising had 22 disciplinary infractions and the other had 15, including four against prison staff, Ozmint said. Both have been moved to other prisons.

"When you are dealing with putting these inmates into one location to keep the rest of the population safe from them, you're going to have these things," Ozmint said.

Even if guards do everything right "a criminal every once in a while is just bound and determined to be a criminal and there's not a lot you can do about it," Ozmint said. "It's just way too early to start blaming."

When the ordeal was over, reporters were let in to see a trashed facility with bloodstained homemade knives on the floor, cabbage and biscuits from Wednesday night's dinner thrown everywhere and several windows shattered.

Ozmint, on the job since January, said there's no way to prevent inmates from making and concealing weapons like the ones used in the uprising.

The Lee County facility had not had a shakedown since April or May because those through searches for weapons and contraband take guards away from other facilities, he said.

"Every one of those shakedowns drives up the cost of doing business in this department" with overtime and other costs, Ozmint said.

While prison employees are determined to keep weapons out of inmates' hands, "there really is no amount of staffing that you can provide that can prevent inmates from arming themselves if they want to hurt somebody. ... Anybody who tells you otherwise is living in a fantasy land," Ozmint said.

Gov. Mark Sanford said he was told hostages were taken while he was on an economic development mission in Japan. He asked the State Law Enforcement Division to "set up an independent investigation of that facility" and instructed Ozmint to cooperate.

Ozmint said those investigations are routine and he will help state agents.

The inmate accused of sparking the uprising told a reporter allowed into the prison he had filed numerous complaints against one of the officers taken hostage, including that the officer beat shackled prisoners.

Ozmint, who refused to release details on the guards or prisoners, said that inmate had not filed a single complaint. "Not only had he not filed a complaint against that particular officer, but nobody else had," Ozmint said.

The Corrections Department has suffered from budget cuts and ran a $21 million budget deficit in the fiscal year that ended June 30, but the governor doesn't know if that played a part in the incident.

Lee Correctional had 1,661 inmates as of Oct. 15, agency records show and has an operating capacity of 1,736 prisoners.

"It's not one of the facilities where you have three people laying on a mat on the floor," Sanford said.

Ozmint was careful Thursday not to blame the Lee hostage-taking on state money for the prison system. "If I talk about cuts here, you'd think we were blaming cuts," he said.

Even with five or six officers in that housing unit, if "these inmates wanted to do this and were bound and determined to do it, there is no guarantee that any staffing level, any budget level, could prevent it," he said.

In a hostage incident at the prison four years ago, two inmates with a homemade knife took a teacher and a secretary hostage in a classroom. The hostages were released unharmed after about 13 hours.

Sanford praised the people handling the situation. "It could have spiraled out of control. It could have become a disaster story," he said.

Ozmint had no estimate of the damage to the $5.4 million housing unit or the $2 million in equipment and furnishings it contained. He said the agency will file an insurance claim.