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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 Keith Provost. Unlike many prisons and jails across the country, there are no video cameras on the cell blocks 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 ssay 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.
Prisoners have 24 hours a day to find breaks in the system. says Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary John Wetzel adding that it could be a loose chain link or peeling paint around vents that could give the prisoners what they need to develop a escape plan. According to Wetzel, when people are sentenced to a life in prison, they have all the time in the world to come up with escape plans. "If you have life to plan it out, you can wait for your opportunity."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @08:25AM
Prison officials don't have a large enough budget to be vigilant and attentive. See what happens when you don't pay them enough to care. Do you see what happens. This is what happens. Killers are on the loose and your children are in danger. Think of the children.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 22 2015, @09:17AM
The usual answer we hear regarding education, health care, and every other problem the nation faces. Throw more money at it.
The article mentions that there have been increases in personnel in the prison in recent years. As I state in my post below - those personnel are grossly incompetent. GROSSLY incompetent. Instead of guarding prisoners, they are probably busy teaching prisoners things like computer hacking, or needlepoint, depending on the prisoner's preferences.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday June 22 2015, @09:40AM
Or maybe if the US 'justice' system wasn't so intent on convicting without trial as many harmless and/or innocent people as possible for little to no reason and thereby pushing the incarceration facilities to breaking point, there would be sufficient resources to manage the dangerous people who really do need to be in there.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 22 2015, @10:06AM
You make a good point there. The "justice" system is broken, and broken badly. I can't address pre-1945, but I know for certain that around the end of the second world war, that "Reefer Madness" craze took hold, and literally millions of poor dumb chumps have been locked up since then. Things have only gotten worse since then. Today, we have private prisons sprouting up around the nation, like poisonous mushrooms, and they all have contracts with the courts to maintain 90% capacity. Money, money, money - that's the name of the game.
But, none of that excuses incompetence.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday June 22 2015, @02:31PM
There were two waves of anti-pot efforts, both based on the same fears and motivations.
The first wave that made Mary Jane illegal in the first place was started in 1930 by Harry Anslinger, head of the Bureau of Narcotics at the time. The reason for making pot illegal, as Anslinger stated quite openly, was that "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men. ... The primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races. ... Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."
The second wave, the one that turned it from being one of the many things cops were charged with enforcing to the War on Drugs (TM), was pushed forward by Richard Nixon and his chief of staff HR Haldeman. Their purpose, as Haldeman explains in his diary: "P [Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." Nixon also saw this as a way to turn his anti-hippie efforts into a "law and order" campaign.
One reason that public opinion has shifted about the War on Drugs and marijuana in particular is that open racism is no longer as acceptable as it once was in the US.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @02:49PM
One reason that public opinion has shifted about the War on Drugs and marijuana in particular is that open racism is no longer as acceptable as it once was in the US.
Open racism is acceptable, it's just that the acceptable target race has shifted to white.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2015, @09:48PM
As I have said before, "trickle down" only applies to bad stuff.
When you allow others to be victimized, it's only a matter of time before they get around to you. [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 22 2015, @12:17PM
harmless ... people
About a mile from my house there's a prison for drunk drivers. Really more of an addiction treatment center. I'm not sure WRT addiction that its wise to keep them near their friends and family who supported their addiction but its supposedly "humane", admittedly the point is they work release them so they don't lose their jobs and then treatment all night. My neighbor with like 8 lifetime DUI convictions (some very large number anyway) spent the better part of a year in there and still has a job and AFAIK still doesn't drink, at least not yet. Anyway about 100 miles away they have a real prison with murderers.
The point I'm making is an ideal system would have the moron guards and moron architects at the drunk tank, and the hard core ex-marine guards and hard core architects ("hard core architects" sounds like a pr0n movie) at the murderer prison. Unfortunately the real world of poor management would put murderers in the drunk tank, and moron guards at both sites, which seems to be the core of the problem.
So the cultural failure you point out is true and an issue, but doesn't need to be fought to keep elite prisoners guarded by elite guards at an elite facility. Its a simple management failure that these killers were in podunk prison guarded by cartoon characters.