Security Oversights and Complacency Set the Stage For Killers' Escape

HughPickens.com writes: The NY Times reports that although no single lapse or mistake in security enabled two killers to break out of the Clinton Correctional Facility two weeks ago, it is now clear that an array of oversights, years in the making, set the stage for the prison break and for the ensuing manhunt. According to the Times, a sense of complacency had taken hold that in some ways might have been understandable: "There had not been an escape from the 170-year-old prison in decades, and officials say no one had ever broken out of the maximum-security section. ... 'As the months go by, years go by, things get less strict,' says [retired corrections officer] Keith Provost. ... [U]nlike many prisons and jails across the country, there are no video cameras on the cellblocks at the Clinton facility that might have detected suspicious activity." And although prison rules forbid putting sheets across cell bars to obstruct viewing, in practice, officers say, inmates frequently were allowed to hang sheets for lengthy periods. Officials say there is a good chance that the two men had been at work on their plan for weeks, maybe months. Night after night, the authorities have come to believe, the two men stuffed their beds with crude dummies, slipped out of holes they had cut in the back of their cells and climbed down five stories using the piping along the walls. They then set to work inside the tunnels under the prison, spending hours preparing their path of escape before returning to their cells unobserved. No contemporary prison break has reminded me so much of the 1962 breakout from Alcatraz (theories on survival aside).

Comments

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we care so much about these two random guys who escaped from prison?

You want to care about prison conditions? Try asking yourself how many people have died in that prison. Try asking how many people have been raped in that prison.

Then ask about the rest of them in this country.

Re:Shawshank Redemption

[ShanghaiBill]

a pity that it was only the escape part and didn't expose massive high level corruption and abuse as well.

The corruption and abuse in the prison system, and the collusion between the prison industry, the unions, and the police, to keep it going, does not need to be "exposed" because it is done openly, and generally with the support of the public. Any attempt to fix the prisons needs to start with a massive reduction in the number of people incarcerated. Per capita, America imprisons far more than other countries, and far more than even authoritarian countries such as China and Russia.

Before election day, you will see ads, and receive mailers, from politicians promising to "get tough on crime", along with endorsements by the police chief, and the police union. Please vote for someone else.

List of countries by incarceration rate

Where they're searching next

[spudnic]

Does anyone else find it odd that the press is reporting where the police will be searching next for the escapees? Who are they trying to help here?