WILMINGTON -- Two state lawmakers concerned about medical care for the state's 6,600 inmates said a tour of one prison Monday left them with some unanswered questions.

Sen. Charles L. Copeland, R-West Farms, and Rep. Hazel D. Plant, D-Wilmington Central, were given a tour of Young Correctional Institution, formerly known as Gander Hill prison, in Wilmington by Paul Howard, chief of the Bureau of Prisons.

"There was a lot we did see, and a lot we didn't see," said Plant, briefing reporters at the front gate of the prison after the tour.

The pair of lawmakers interviewed several inmates who spoke of medical problems, but they did not release their names.

"We don't want repercussions. We want to take precautions," Plant said. "We wanted to see more medical. We're not going to give up."

Copeland and Plant had sought to include several members of the clergy as well as the media, but Howard refused.

"This was specifically for state elected officials," Howard said.

The Rev. Christopher Bullock of Wilmington's Canaan Baptist Church was angry he had been excluded from the fact-finding tour.

"As a man of God and a man of the cloth, it is a continuing pattern of outrage to deny me the opportunity to see the institution, meet with the officers and hear the issues from the inmates," Bullock said.

The tour came in response to a six-month investigation by The News Journal, which highlighted AIDS-related inmate deaths and suicides over the past four years; allegations by inmates of poor medical treatment for cancer, meningitis and hepatitis; and a no-bid $25.9 million contract awarded this year to St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services to manage health care in the state's prisons.

Copeland said he questioned the recent transition from one medical provider to another, and he was very concerned about a seriously understaffed guard force.

"No doubt I learned a lot," he said. "I talked to inmates and found they have concerns with medical services."

A group of more than 30 churches, social-services organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware sent letters to Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and the General Assembly urging them to send emergency medical teams into Delaware prisons to determine whether inmates are receiving appropriate medical care.

Copeland, Plant and other lawmakers have asked for independent investigations.

Last week, Wilmington City Council voted unanimously to ask Minner to establish a task force to investigate allegations of inadequate health care in Delaware's prisons.

The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a "formal inquiry" into medical care and other systemic issues inside the prisons.