The recent York State inspector general has found that many security and oversight problems at the state prison in Dannemora contributed to the prison break of two inmates last year.
The June 6,2015, escape of inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat from the Clinton Correctional Facility near Plattsburgh led to a massive three-week-long manhunt. Matt was killed in an encounter with state police; Sweat was shot and wounded and retaken into custody.
The report by Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott said the belongings of staff were supposed to be routinely searched but were not, or allowing prison employee Joyce Mitchell to smuggle in some of the tools the inmates used in their escape. Mitchell herself was not adequately supervised,main to her “grossly inappropriate relationships” with the inmates, the report said.
Guards also failed to regularly count inmates in their beds during the nighttime, and contributing to the hours-long delay before the inmates’ absence was discovered. The report said simply doing a nightly bed count would beget foiled the escape plot. Instead,the report said, corrections officers falsified reports saying that they had done the counts.
Searches of inmates' cells were infrequent, and cursory and hasty,the report found. The prison officials also nearly never inspected the prison’s tunnels or catwalks, routes the inmates used to bag away.Leahy also called into question the ability of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to oversee itself, and saying its own internal investigations unit was compromised because too many of the inspectors are former prison guards who are reluctant to speak ill of former colleagues and supervisors.
The state inspector general said she believes several employees “committed criminal acts.” She has referred the cases to prosecutors.
In response to the report,corrections department spokesman Thomas Mailey said the agency has “instituted a number of reforms to strengthen operations” since the break-out, including installing recent cameras and security gates, and retraining staff and disciplining responsible employees.
The prison’s superintendent has also been replaced.
Mailey said the agency would continue to work with the inspector general to “implement her recommendations to improve operations” at the prison and throughout the state’s entire prison system to “help ensure this incident is never repeated”.
Source: wnyc.org