Guards failed to notice months of tunneling: jail break report
By Jana G. Pruden, Leader-PostMarch 12, 2009 10:01 PM
Source: Guards failed to notice months of tunneling: jail break report
REGINA -- A nail clipper, bored and angry inmates, poor management and a culture
of complacency, blaming, and disrespect among correctional workers created a
perfect environment for a successful jailbreak, according to a bluntly critical report
released by the government on Thursday.
The report about the Aug. 24 escape of six dangerous inmates from the Regina
Provincial Correctional Centre paints a picture of a facility in crisis, and raises
serious questions about the operation and management of the jail.
Indeed, even the inmates involved in the escape appear to have been surprised by
their feat.
“We didn’t think we would get away with it,” one of the six is quoted in the report
as saying. “We started working on it. It was something to do and we just kept at
it. When we didn’t get caught, we picked our night and just went.”
The report, prepared by an independent three-person investigation team and
censored by Deputy Minister of Corrections, Public Safety and Policing Al Hilton,
was released by government Thursday.
The comprehensive 139-page report says inmates
began engineering the escape in
May, when they placed a table in front of a heat register in the corridor of the 3A
range, in the 1960s era portion of the facility. While inmates played cards at the
table to block the view of correctional officers, other inmates toiled underneath,
first using a modified nail clipper to remove the heating register, then tearing
through the steel back plate and chipping away at the exterior brick wall.
On the night of Aug. 24, the inmates smashed through the weakened outer wall
with
a steel shower rod, and lowered themselves to the ground with
ropes braided
out of blankets and bed sheets.
The six inmates placed
winter coats over the razor wire fence, and used
additional
ropes to climb down to the ground. They
then scaled two more fences and fled.
The first of the escapees was recaptured within hours, and the last nearly a month
later. The investigation team, led by longtime Correctional Service of Canada
official William Peet, was commissioned in the wake of the bold jailbreak.
But the most damning aspects of the report pertain not to the escape, but to what
happened before and after the actual event.
The report points out that inmates worked on the hole for a period of
four
months, during which time
at least 87 different guards supervised the unit.
“It is accepted that an inmate or a group of inmates can deceive a Corrections
Worker or a group of Corrections Workers on any given shift,” the report says.
“The (investigation team) does not accept that
an entire corridor of inmates can
deceive the large number of Corrections Workers that supervised the unit over an
extended period.” 8O
(Yeah...for FOUR MONTHS)
The report says there were also clear indications of the plan as long as two months
before the escape — including
a tip that inmates were “going to be out soon” and
were
“doing it like in the movies” — but critical pieces of information were not
followed up adequately by jail management. Several correctional workers also
suspected inmates were “up to something” but didn’t interview inmates, the
report found.
Corrections workers didn’t realize there had been an escape
for more than an
hour, and
only discovered what had occurred after being contacted by Regina
police. Though the initial lockdown went relatively smoothly, the report found that
what followed was an “uncontrolled and confused response,” which included a lack
of direction from management,
a 15-hour delay in notifying the media and
public, and some inmates being confined in restraints for an excessively long
period.
The report says some staff members subsequently interfered with evidence at the
scene and deliberately omitted information relevant to the escape in their reports,
later telling the investigation team they didn’t want to “rat out on a brother or
sister.”
The report identifies
not only a very poor relationship between inmates and
corrections workers, but an “adversarial and controversial” relationship between
corrections workers and management.
The report highlights the dangerous combination of distracted guards, who had
access to the Internet and recreational reading material at their posts, and
bored inmates, many of whom were sitting on remand with nothing to do.
“When people have large blocks of time on their hands with nothing constructive to
do, they tend to gravitate towards doing whatever they can get away with,” the
report says.
“In this instance, it was digging their way out of the facility.”
The report also puts some blame on the poor condition and maintenance of the
facility, noting the “sense of neglect” demonstrated in the peeling paint, holes,
cracks, and graffiti.
“Operationally, Unit 3A epitomizes a disorderly environment and is a breeding
ground for disorder and criminal activity,” the report says.
The report also isolates a number of broader issues around the way staff are
interacting with inmates at the facility, including a fundamental lack of knowledge
about the principles of incarceration and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“As a staff member one can despise the crimes alleged to have been committed by
inmates however it is expected that they be treated humanely and with dignity,”
the report said. “It is not the place for Corrections Workers to judge the offender
and therefore treat the offender in a manner that is not consistent with the
Ministry’s mission.”
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This is a demonstration of a culture of Unionized Government Employee's
at their very absolute worst. Watch the excuses fly now. This'll be rich...
Where do you hit several winter coats, and many-many ropes made out of
sheets and blankets in a prison in August??? I guess in the same place that
you hide a HOLE IN THE WALL...as long as nobody bothers to check.
Somebody had to call the Police, who had to call the Prison, who then had
to go and check to find out that Six Prisoners left an hour before through a
HOLE IN THE WALL.
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