Central Unit trusty broke out of, and back into, prison 70 times for shopping trips

More detail from Mike Ward at the Statesman on what's apparently a chronic problems with prisonsers walking off the Central Unit in Sugarland to shop at a nearby Walmart (you can't make this stuff up):

Prison officials never knew he was gone.

And after they were tipped to the late-night trip, officials confirmed Monday, they had to verify the escape by viewing the store's surveillance camera system — which was much better than the one the prison has.

Authorities said they were investigating reports that Skyler Steddum, 19, might have made as many as 70 such shopping trips from Sugar Land's Central Unit, where he was a trusty in a part of the prison without fences.

It was the latest security breach in Texas prisons since officials promised improved security 16 months ago, after a death-row convict used a smuggled cell phone to call a state senator.

"He went out on Tuesday. We didn't find out about it until Friday night, when somebody inside the prison snitched him off," said John Moriarty, inspector general for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, who is overseeing the investigation. "He bought smokeless tobacco and cigarettes. I don't know how much."

This incident provides a security rationale for arguing the Central Unit should be closed, in addition to the economic ones I've discussed in the past.

Breaking out and back into prison 70 times - that's got to approach some kind of record

Whitmire: Latest escape shows TDCJ needs 'shakeup' over contraband

After spending the last year trying to get the Texas prison system to reduce contraband flows, I'll bet state Sen. John Whitmire's head nearly exploded when he learned of yesterday's escape using a gun smuggled to an inmate. In an article by Peggy O'Hare in the Houston Chronicle, he openly called for Governor Perry to replace the board and top administrators at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice:

After facing serious questions about how 900 prohibited cell phones were smuggled into Texas prisons this year along with drugs and weapons, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found itself on the defensive again Tuesday while trying to find an inmate who escaped despite being shackled to a wheelchair.

TDCJ officials could answer few questions Tuesday about how convicted rapist Arcade Joseph Comeaux Jr., 49, managed to pull off a daring escape Monday from a prison van in Baytown after pulling a gun and handcuffing two transport officers driving him to another prison, stealing their three guns and walking away. Nor could prison officials explain how Comeaux obtained the gun he pulled on the officers or how he convinced medical personnel he needed a wheelchair for the past decade.

The chairman of the Senate corrections committee said the latest incident shows Gov. Rick Perry needs to shake up the state prison system and its oversight board.

Corrections Committee Chairman Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, received a threat a year ago from a death row inmate using a smuggled cell phone. Whitmire said Perry and the TDCJ cracked down on contraband shortly after that. But Monday's escape shows the system has again become lax, Whitmire said.

“Maybe it's time, with top state leadership, to consider a major shakeup in TDCJ,” Whitmire said. “It's time for the governor to take what should be the next step in making certain the chairman and TDCJ and his director and staff understand what zero tolerance really means.”

MORE: From The Back Gate.

Battered escapee was TYC alum

(SEE CLARIFICATION AT THE END) In 2007, the Texas Legislature changed the max age for Texas Youth Commission inmates from 21 to 19, sending 19-20 year olds who committed their crimes as juveniles to state prisons. But perhaps in 2011 - after the administration has had time to implement the Sunset bill and get its feet under them after a period of rough transition - lawmakers should rethink that decision..

Few criticized the move at the time, but in the next two years one heard increasing rumblings out of TYC - especially from the old-timers but also from then-Ombudsman Will Harrell - that this had been a mistake and that the move was sending lambs to the wolves, setting up those who were transferred for abuse or worse at the hands of older inmates. According to the Ombudsman, youth sent to TDCJ were "five times more likely to be sexually victimized, eight times more likely to commit suicide, and twice as likely to be attacked with a weapon or beaten by corrections officers,"

Which brings us to Joshua Barnes, the inmate who made a daring escape from the UTMB prison hospital in Galveston and was just caught Wednesday in Irving. Today is his 21st birthday and he's a TYC alum. I don't know why Barnes tried to escape, but looking at this photo taken at the prison hospital I think I can guess:


Yesterday I received an email about the case from a long-timer at TYC who writes:

I knew this kid. He was at Sheffield. This troubles me to no end to see him like this and making the news. He did really well in TYC but was one of those kids who needed our attention in the community. If they had not changed the law regarding aging out of TYC at 19 as opposed to 21, then I doubt this one would be looking at such a long prison term. This was a good kid. His parents gave up on him. His future is a shame. Take a look at TDCJ's Fugitive Watch web page. Take a look at this kid who looks like he was beat badly at TDCJ which is why he was at UTMB in Galveston. I think I'd run too if I took a beating that bad. He turns 21 years old tomorrow. This may not of happened if they didn't change that law in SB103. Take a look. Now, instead of a 35 year prison term, he's looking at adding 15-20 more years I'd bet.

We need to change the law and TYC should be able to work with these kids until age 21.

This escape has many folks questioning what went wrong, but it's quite possible that moving 19-20 year olds from TYC to adult prisons was a significant contributing factor that nobody's talking about.

CLARIFICATION: Whoops! Larance Coleman, the policy director at the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, emails to say my contact at TYC gave me bad information. He writes:

Scott, major problem with your post, check the public conviction data at DPS, he was received in TYC in 2001, he was out on the street and arrested for an adult felony (possibly the same year he was released) on 10-13-2006. This would have made him 18 and if he was not a determine sentence youth TYC could have kept him until he was 21, since the new law was not passed until 2007. Although I do not know his TYC status, it appears that TYC made the release decision and as an adult he has committed one crime after the other, often days after his release from custody. Thanks.

NUTHER UPDATE: And here's a response from the original emailer:

The kid was on TYC parole status at a foster care home when he absconded and burglarized some homes. He could have had his parole revoked and returned to TYC. Instead they put him in jail, and while there, it appears he escaped and was charged with that as well. It was his first time on parole. It's not like he had multiple TYC parole revocations. If that were the case, I'd feel different. If his crimes were not property crimes, and instead murder, rape and so forth, I'd feel different. The thing that bothers me is that I think we should have had another crack at rehabilitating him in a TYC program.

So there's the crux of debate - over what happens to parole revocations for those convicted as juveniles. My apologies if the original post mischaracterized Barnes' TYC-related status.

Sundance Film Touted as Brokeback Mountain meets Catch Me If You Can, Set in Harris County Jail

Congrats to Houston writer Steve McVicker, whose nonfiction tale, I Love You, Phillip Morris, will premiere on the big screen at the Sundance Film Festival starring A-list stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. Reported the Houston Chronicle:

Signing Carrey to play Steven Russell, a family man and peace officer turned escape artist and one-man Texas crime spree, and getting McGregor to play his lockup lover, Phillip Morris, means the film will get plenty of attention at Sundance and should have good box-office prospects. Last week, the entertainment industry magazine Variety led its Sundance story with a photo from the film and a first-paragraph mention.

Written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the screenwriters of the notoriously funny Bad Santa, starring Billy Bob Thornton, I Love You Phillip Morris is being pitched as Catch Me If You Can meets Brokeback Mountain. The film’s 3-minute trailer, all McVicker has seen or wants to see before Sundance, emphasizes comedy over drama and romance....

The story is bizarre but true. Russell met Morris while in the law library of the Harris County Jail. Russell was in for insurance fraud, Morris for forgetting to return a rental car. It was love at first sight. Romance proved the great inspiration of Russell’s life, but it was also his undoing.

Once Morris was out of jail, Russell developed a bad habit: using wily ruses to break out in order to be with him. While free, he compounded his error by pulling clever cons in order to buy Russell a good lifestyle. Clever or not, he eventually was caught again.

“He’s a really personable guy, very charming,” says McVicker, who interviewed Russell dozens of times in the Michael Unit of the Texas prison system, first for the Press, then for his book. “The kind of guy I’d like to have dinner with, he’s really interesting.

“But he’s also a crook.”

McVicker's one of Houston's top reporters on justice and public safety topics, doing some of his best work at the Houston Press and the Houston Chronicle covering the fallout from that city's infamous crime lab scandal. Perhaps he'll next publish a book on that topic; given the overarching Keystone Kops component to the Houston crime lab story, it might even be the kind of vehicle a comedic Jim Carrey could star in.

Meet the next great American diet book author ...

There was a young fellow named Green,
Who grew so abnormally lean,
And flat, and compressed,
That his back touched his chest,
And sideways he couldn't be seen.

You've got to admit this was a brilliant escape plot:

Texas police are searching for a man who slimmed down to escape from jail.

Authorities say Darryl Layne Norris, who is charged with murder, had been shedding pounds since checking into the Waller County Jail in April. They say he slipped out through an air conditioner vent less than a foot wide.

Not the preferred solution to jail overcrowding

The Jim Hogg County Jail in Hebronville has room for 18 people in it, though there were only 10 as of January 1, 2008. One of them, though, was 24-year old convicted rapist Abel Morin, who escaped out an unlocked door while being transferred between cells less than 24 hours after he was sentenced to life in prison.

Bizarrely, Morin was convicted in Duval County, but had been moved to Jim Hogg County because he complained about the food! Doesn't everybody complain about jail food? There are literally no incorporated towns in Jim Hogg County, including the county seat! So the Sheriff's Department is it as far as law enforcement goes. But even if your jail's the size of the one in Andy Griffith's Mayberry, there's a minimum level of professionalism required if you want to actually operate a law enforcement agency. In this case, apparently one lone jailer was on guard, and watched helplessly as the unshackled convict ran out the door. This is NOT the preferred solution to jail overcrowding.

Honey, the Marshals are here, I won't be home for dinner

Check out this Houston Chronicle story about a woman convicted of armed robbery who escaped from prison 33 years ago, married and lived a law abiding life for decades in the Piney Woods of East Texas, but is now awaiting extradition back to a Georgia hoosegow:

In the 33 years since her escape from a Georgia women's prison, Deborah Ann Gavin Murphey was able to evade authorities and keep most of her past to herself, carving out a small-town life in East Texas where she worked as a nurse and raised two children.

I've got really mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, nobody wants to reward a prison escape (and I don't know the statute of limitations for such a crime in Georgia). But from a public safety perspective, I'm not sure anyone benefits from her future prosecution or incarceration. Years of fear, isolation, and living a "hermit"-like existence (according to her acquaintances) surely were punishment enough, particularly coupled with years of marital stability, successful child rearing, and service as a practitioner of the healing arts.

Then there are the mitigating factors around her escape. Murphey, who was 20-years old when she escaped for the sixth and final time, was allegedly sexually abused at the prison, which the Chronicle reports did have serious, confirmed cases of sexual assault on female inmates during the time she was incarcerated.

Bottom line, this woman got away from a life of crime and made a life for herself and her family. Does it make sense to punish her now for what happened in the early '70s?

What do you think?

Another escape; three in a week!

Perhaps it's a coincidence, but law enforcement in Texas at all levels, federal, state, and local, saw prisoners escape in Texas last week, most recently from a federal prison in Crystal City.

The last seven days witnessed escapes from TDCJ by two murderers (since recaptured) where a guard was murdered, an escape by three men from the Nacogdoches County Jail (with apparent help from a guard - two have been recaptured), and now a federal inmate serving time for carjacking.

Prisoners are like rebellious teenagers in this sense - they've got lots of time to sit around and think up ways to get into trouble, if they're so inclined. So it's not that surprising that occasionally someone figures out how to take advantage of a location-specific opportunity (or a corrupt guard) and make a getaway, no matter how many precautions are taken - as TDCJ CO Susan Canfield's death reminds us, it only takes one mistake for lightning to strike.

Even so, three escapes in a week, from every level of law enforcement, should raise eyebrows. The feds have the same problem as adult prisons and small-town county jails. What do they have in common? What lessons can be learned from these incidents that might improve safety in the future?

One theory: Most Texas corrections facilities today are understaffed; even though crime is down, prison and jail populations are bursting at the seams. Meanwhile, most incarcerated offenders committed non-violent crimes, but their presence in prisons and jails leaves thin resources for guarding more dangerous prisoners, like those involved in these escapes.

A past campaign client of mine, former state Rep. Ray Allen, likes to say we should reserve incarceration for those whom we're afraid of, not those at whom we're only angry. These escapees were all from the class of offenders of whom society should be afraid. Shifting more resources toward their supervision might make society safer than incarcerating many people who don't pose the same danger.

RELATED: The Houston Chronicle has an interesting historical article this morning by Mike Tolson on the history of Texas prison escapes, including the tale of Raymond Hamilton, a former Depression-era running partner of Bonnie and Clyde who escaped from Texas death row on the same day John Dillinger was killed in Chicago.

CO dies during escape attempt by murderers working outside the walls

Let me offer my condolences to the family and friends of Susan Canfield, the correctional officer who died Monday during an escape attempt by two convicted murderers. Reported the Houston Chronicle:

A correctional officer on horseback apparently violated state prison policy when he allowed an inmate on a work detail to approach him, an official said Tuesday, a lapse that possibly led to another mounted officer's death during an escape attempt. ...

Canfield's death has raised serious questions about which inmates should be allowed to work outside a prison as well as how they should be monitored.

Both inmates had been convicted of violent crimes, yet both qualified for outside work. Inmates may be considered for outside work only if they have served at least 10 years — a mark that Martin passed only last month — and have a clean disciplinary record.

While Martin's record was clean enough for field work, it was not a spotless one.

On July 17, he was relocated to Wynne from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston after it was discovered he engaged in sexual behavior with a licensed vocational nurse at the unit.

"It's a pending investigation," said John Moriarty, TDCJ's inspector general, who added that the nurse no longer works for the prison system. No charges had been filed against the nurse as of Tuesday.

As a result of the incident, the prison system revoked 30 days of good time accrued by Martin. Good time is a credit inmates earn for good behavior.

Despite the loss of good time, he was approved for field work because the sexual encounter did not affect his eligibility for outside duties.

The way inmates are considered for jobs at state prisons was changed in 2003, following the escape of seven Texas inmates from a South Texas prison.

Previously, inmates who showed they had adjusted to prison life by serving their time without incident or incurring disciplinary actions, no matter how long they had been in prison, could qualify. Now, they must serve at least 10 years.

UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter for pointing out that TexasJustice.org has more, including details on funeral arrangements, this clarification of the offenders' status, and a list of officers on duty at the time of Officer Canfield's murder. MORE: One of the captured escapees tried unsuccessfully to kill himself early this morning. MORE: Escapees may face death penalty.

RELATED: Three inmates from the Nacogdoches County jail escaped yesterday, and unlike the escapees at the Wynne Unit they've not yet been captured. Apparently a door at the jail was left unlocked by inspectors, said the Sheriff, and an electronic indicator failed to alert guards when the inmates left. MORE: The Nacogdoches Sheriff has called off the dogs, reports the Daily Sentinel, which has more on the lock problems that led to the escape. AND MORE: A Nacogdoches jailer was arrested for helping the inmates' escape. MORE: A brother of the Nacogdoches jailer was also arrested. Two of the three have been recaptured.

Audit criticizes Brazoria County juvie probation department

Drug peddling at the local boot camp, escapes, and a recent suicided by an unmonitored youth have the Brazoria County juvenile probation department looking for answers. The Brazoria County Facts yesterday profiled problems at that department raised in a recent state audit. (I hope the Facts follows up - there's definitely more to tell about the story.) Reported The Facts ("Department working to combat negative light," Sept. 2):

The department, which oversees juvenile detention, juvenile probation and the juvenile justice alternative education program or boot camp, was cited by the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission in December for several standards in non-compliance.

The citations included allowing detained juveniles to attend classes with the students in the alternative education program, not having constant visual supervision for all multiple-occupancy housing units, not having medical and psychological evaluations on all inmates prior to admission and not performing room checks at least every 10 minutes on inmates who are deemed to have a moderate suicide risk.

Changes also have been prompted by several incidents this year, including two escapes, two juveniles admitting to using, selling and delivering cocaine at the boot camp, and most recently, a suicide attempt July 1 in which a inmate hung himself with his socks and jumpsuit.

The teen later was taken to the hospital and recovered from his injuries.

The similarities between some of the Brazoria juvenile probation department's woes and what's happening at the Texas Youth Commission struck me as particularly telling, especially problems stemming from high staff turnover and new management taken from the adult prison system:

Chief Probation Officer Diana Coates, who runs the juvenile probation department, and members of the juvenile probation board say the problems largely are due to a change in culture at the department.

Coates formerly worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as an assistant warden at the Clemens Prison Unit and the statewide director for youthful offenders.

The change in culture has been through working with employees to adhere to state standards, whereas they were not followed closely under the previous chief probation officer, Fred Williamson ...

Since Coates has taken charge of the juvenile probation department, more than half of its staff — 65 employees — either have been terminated or quit, according to statistics provided by the county’s human resources department.

Many former employees say the culture at the juvenile probation department is heavy on micromanagement and many former TDCJ guards are being hired by Coates.

“You have the upper echelon disciplining the employees more than the juveniles,” said Chase Gaines, who worked for the juvenile probation department for three years.

With so many former prison employees working at the facility, the attitude has changed at juvenile probation, he said.

“They don’t care enough to know what’s going on,” Gaines said. “This is not prison. This is a juvenile system.”

Coates said she has hired several former prison system employees, but none she previously knew.

“There’s a lot of TDCJ people in Brazoria County,” she said. “By and large they are usually the most qualified because of their experience.”

Brazoria County has six Texas prison units, which employ about 3,000 people.

I'm sure Coates didn't help agency morale much by sandbagging her employees and failing to tell them an audit was coming. They'd passed a previous audit in 2005 when the agency had a week to prepare (which makes me think the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission should switch to unannounced reviews).

The whole article is definitely worth a read, and I'll bet Brazoria County's not the only juvenile probation department experiencing similar problems. Maybe tomorrow I'll see if I can lay my hands on that audit.

TYC privatization scheme measures wrong performance goals

Examining further materials from the Texas Youth Commission request for proposals to provide contract care to incarcerated kids aged 10-13, I was disappointed to read Exhibit K (uploaded here) identifying how private residential facilities' performance would be measured. Residential contract compliance will be measured on these eight topic:

1. Percent Positive Releases

2. Percent Negative Releases

3. Escapes Per Year Per 10 Students

4. Percent Escapes

5. Felony Arrests Per Year Per 10 Students

6. Misdemeanor Arrests Per Year Per 10 Students

7. Confirmed Mistreatment Per Year Per 10 Students

8. Percent Early Movement [from the program within 30 days]

So basically they're measuring performance based on student misconduct only if it's criminal, "confirmed" staff misconduct, and whether kids escaped or completed their incarceration term. (See Exhibit K for definitions.)

Are those the only ways to measure a residential facility's success, especially one aimed at pre-teens? Those performance measures evaluate the warehousing function, but what about measuring whether contract care is meeting kids' needs?

How about meeting educational goals for kids? Where are the performance measures for that? What if a performance measure were the number of kids who left the facility able to read at their own grade level? That might be helpful.

Kids get a medical and psych evaluation when they first come to TYC. Shouldn't one of the performance measures for private facilities be to demonstrate whether kids received adequate treatment and counseling to address problems identified at intake? Shouldn't you measure that so facilities where kids aren't getting appropriate care don't have their contracts renewed?

For that matter, focusing only on "confirmed" abuse by staff leaves open the question of who's doing the confirming at private facilities, which often aren't very well monitored. All abuse complaints should be reported as well as the percentage that are confirmed. Similarly, there is lots of youth misconduct that doesn't result in arrests for misdemeanors and felonies, but these criteria indicate TYC doesn't care what the kids do so long as they're not arrested. Why only measure performance based on arrests?

I'm just spitballing here, but this list of performance measures to me seems woefully inadequate. I care about private facilities' performance on a much broader range of issues than these
narrow criteria would indicate.

This RFP has already been closed and bidders' proposals are all based on meeting the eight criteria named above. That could leave the state with an inferior product that supplies little oversight on the topics that really matter. What a mess.

There's a reason prisons have walls: Grandstanding pols overlook real solutions to Bexar jail overcrowding

Every politician wants to look "tuff on crime," I suppose, but the faddish idea of housing prisoners outdoors in tents is more stupid than tough, by a longshot.

In a pre-election publicity stunt, a couple of Bexar County Commissioners are flying to Arizona to view the tent-city jail in Maricopa County that represents the ultimate in "tough" incarceration policies - work in the desert sun, food of the cheapest, poorest quality, and everyone must wear pink clothing in an effort to humiliate them.

County commissioners from Bexar and Midland counties and the Cameron Sheriff say they want the Texas Legislature to make tent jails legal - right now they're not except as a temporary solution to jail overcrowding.

Problem is, tent jails are unsafe for everybody - guards, inmates and the public. They're easier to smuggle weapons into, easier to escape from, and put guards in jeopardy.

Think about it. If you want to smuggle a gun into the local jail, how would you do it? You'd have to come up with a pretty elaborate scheme, and probably have some help on the inside. Now think how you'd smuggle a gun into a tent city jail - you'd throw it over the fence.

There's a reason prisons have walls.

The outdoor jail in Maricopa County suffers from just those problems, reports the SA Express News ("Bexar County tent jail idea 'get tough' or gimmick?," Oct. 30):

Amnesty International has called it one of the world's worst jails. Dozens of lawsuits — many successful — have been filed over the years.

In 1996, the county settled for $8.25 million in the death of inmate Scott Norberg, and last April a federal jury awarded $9 million to the family of Charles Agster III.

In September 2002, Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson L. Lankford held Arpaio liable for the severe beating of an inmate.

Lankford wrote that [Sheriff] Arpaio "admitted knowing about and in fact intentionally designing some conditions at Tent City that created a substantial risk of inmate violence. (There is a) lack of individual security and inmate control inherent in a tent facility (with) the small number of guards, a mixed inmate population subject to overcrowding, extreme heat and lack of amenities."

Also, the tents have not negated the need for more beds in Maricopa County, and last year two new brick-and-mortar jails were completed at a cost of $394 million for 4,473 new beds.

The idea, really, is ridiculous to even contemplate, especially because there are lots of other ways to reduce overcrowding at Texas county jails, and in Bexar County in particular, without resorting to a dangerous showboating tactic that opens the county up to large legal liabilities. For Bexar, as I've written before, the key method would be to reduce the number of low-level offenders being held before trial.

CORRECTION: I misread the local jail report and the following was based on incorrect data. I apologize for the error.

Also, just like in Harris County, Bexar judges are sentencing low-level drug defendants unnecessarily to county jail time instead of drug treatment as a condition of probation on first-offense state jail felonies. Not only do they not have to do that, it thwarts the intent of the law to get these people into treatment, and fills up the county jail for no good reason.

This is a big and totally unreported factor in Bexar County jail overcrowding. Consider: In June 2005, only 19 such defendants were in the jail (see stats in this blog post) - according to the October 1, 2006 jail population report (pdf), last month there were more than 300 such prisoners.

I don't know what changed, whether it's one judge responsible those sentences or all of them changing their tactics, but that's a terrible and unnecessary outcome - bad for the taxpayers and for public safety.

Maybe once election season is over such grandstanding will recede, Bexar's county commissioners and local judges will stop with the "tuff" act, and more serious discussions can begin about overincarceration solutions at the local jail.

Problems Plague Private Prison That Let Six Escape

For those who think private prisons are a viable solution to Texas' overincarceration crisis, check out what inspectors found when they visited the private prison in South Texas that Grits wrote about last month where six inmates escaped, including a defrocked police officer. Reported the Houston Chronicle ("Problems at jail where 6 inmates escaped," Oct. 11):

There were too few guards and too many beds at a privately run South Texas jail where six inmates escaped last month, and some of the guards were unlicensed, an emergency state inspection conducted days after the jail break has found.

Unlicensed guards, and not enough of them - are you surprised there was an escape? (See more from the McAllen Monitor.)

The State of Texas already can't find enough people willing to work as prison guards for the state's paltry pay. Texas is 3,000 prison guards short right now, and one in four guards quits every year. By comparison, private prisons typically have worse pay, worse safety records, and even higher turnover.

And apparently, unlicensed guards.

Is that really the right solution?

It looked harder in 'Escape from Alcatraz'

A man arrested by the Red River Valley Drug Task Force fled custody in October, and was finally recaptured in mid-December. So what feats of derring-do allowed his escape? He just walked out of the unlocked front entrance while task force officers were booking him into the Hopkins County jail, prompting an expensive, two-month-long multi-agency manhunt.

No wonder Chairman Terry Keel and the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee want to get rid of Texas' drug task forces. What an embarrassment.