Human error and "lax" inmate-monitoring procedures are to blame for three men escaping from an Arizona prison in July, according to an internal report released today by the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Those "lax" monitoring procedures and human errors didn't just cause the need for an international manhunt for three violent inmates, it left two people -- who did nothing more than cross paths with the escaped thugs -- dead.
"The report makes clear Management & Training Corp. employees failed to follow sound correctional practices," ADC Director Charles L. Ryan said in a statement released today.
"ADC failed to properly monitor the activities at the Kingman private prison and did not hold
the company's feet to the fire," he said. "The escape demonstrated the department's old monitoring program did not raise critical issues."
The person responsible for on-site monitoring at the prison was moved to another prison after the escape and has since been let go by the department.
Today's report follows another internal review of the escape last month.
That review led to the moving of 148 inmates from the Kingman Prison to more secure facilities.
The inmates moved have been convicted of murder, attempted murder, or have tried to escape at some point in the last 10 years.
In other words, the worst of the worst.
The inmates' security levels won't change -- for example, medium-security inmates will still be housed in medium-security prisons. Those prisons, however, will be facilities run by the state, not private companies, like the Kingman site.
Two of the three men who escaped from the medium-security prison on June 30 were convicted murderers. The other wasn't a murderer, but not for lack of trying. John McCluskey, who remained free the longest (and was apparently engaged to his cousin), was serving a 15-year sentence for attempted murder.
McCluskey and his fiance/cousin have been linked to the murder of an Oklahoma couple on vacation in New Mexico. It's fair to assume the couple would still be alive today if McCluskey had never escaped.
The report points out several security flaws at the Kingman prison that weren't detected during routine audits, including several false alarms, which it seems caused corrections officers to not take the alarm as seriously as they should have.
