The Beaver County Prison Board has disciplined Warden William Schouppe in the wake of an investigator's report detailing a culture of sex, drugs and violence in the county jail, with guards involved in all three.

The board yesterday also announced creation of a citizens' review board to handle complaints and said it would ask the state to review the facility and its operations.

The board's written statement also promised to "take the required disciplinary action if any against the correctional officers for the incidents of misconduct contained within the report."

Board Chairman Richard Towcimak said any officers to be disciplined would be identified later; the Feb. 28 report was turned over to the county district attorney's and state attorney general's offices.

"We're confident that these steps will go a long way toward solving the problems at the jail," Mr. Towcimak said.

Mr. Schouppe, who was suspended for a week and placed on probation for a year, declined comment afterward.

The county hired Gentile-Meinert and Associates of Monaca to investigate after a jail guard testified in court that he had witnessed beatings and other brutality by fellow guards.

Investigators found little evidence to support those statements, but found a disturbing number of more believable stories about guards using unnecessary force with prisoners, guards having sex with prisoners and guards supplying prisoners with drugs.

The report said that in several cases, guards were allowed to resign rather than face allegations, even though some of the allegations would be felonies if true. The investigators interviewed Mr. Schouppe several times, and recorded a number of disparaging remarks he made about guards.

The board suspended him for "inappropriate statements related to correctional officers" and based the probation on his failure to control guards and communicate problems and allegations to the board.

A county commissioner and prison board member, Charles Camp, said he felt it was unfair to single out Mr. Schouppe.

"There's enough blame to go around," he said, "including some that should go to the prison board itself. We're supposed to be monitoring things."

Mr. Camp cast the only dissenting vote to the action plan. District Attorney Tony Berosh, whose office is prosecuting a number of inmates named in the report, abstained. Sheriff Felix DeLuca, Judge Debbie Kunselman, county Commissioners Joe Spanik and Dan Donatella and Mr. Towcimak, who is county controller, voted in favor.

Tom Trkulja, a guard and union steward, said he was pleased with the plan.

"It's things that should be done and things we wanted done," he said after the meeting. "We asked for a lot of this stuff in negotiations, but it fell on deaf ears. If it takes this investigation to get this done, so be it."