Good for officials for acting promptly to fortify fencing and reassign staff in response to the recent prison break at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. The decisions to add $200,000 worth of razor wire and better supervise an outdoor exercise yard should offer neighbors and other Kansans some peace of mind after the daring escape, which apparently was aided by a former prison officer. It’s also reassuring that the escape will be further reviewed by the Kansas Department of Corrections. Kansans need to trust that high-security inmates are in fact secured at the facility.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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15 Comments
What they need is MORE STAFFING. Stop understaffing the prisons- all of them.
Perhaps it’ll take a lawsuit when one of the workers gets killed.
Why doesn’t this prison have a wall around it if it is maximum security?
A fence is easier to see through. And you can dig at concrete or mortar blocks.
It’s not like they’ve got one dinky little fence.
You can see for miles around flat Kansas, it simply makes more sense to be able to see through the fence.
The better question was how they were able to get out of seg- to the yard, and cut through the fence. I have to wonder if they really got through the fence at all. Something isn’t adding up right as to how they escaped. But that’s ok, because maybe it’s better they not advertise that to the world.
Quick sand pits work too.
Why build a new fence? The Kansas legislature keeps reducing sentences to keep people out of prison. The judges put everyone on probation. Fence? We don’t need no stinking fence!
Maybe they need to quit hiring young lonely vulnerable women…I watched a will fall in love with prisoners..makes me ashamed to be female that so women are so gullable.
Maybe their should be a rule about ex employee’s bringing wire cutters in the compound
When you have a huge crowd of prisoners with time on their hands and no privileges to take away, some are going to escape no matter what kind of wall or fence you build.
I will not advocate what Mary said- there are many former and present young single women who have worked for the prison and did NOT do something like this. It’s wrong to discriminate against women this way Mary.
Besides the last one was a married older female.
“”"Why build a new fence? The Kansas legislature keeps reducing sentences to keep people out of prison. The judges put everyone on probation. Fence? We don’t need no stinking fence!”"”
You think that is bad? Here in Georgia they are asking for funding to pay for DirecTV to be installed in prisons and jails… because the inmates “miss seeing Monday Night Football” since it went to cable. I have a better idea- if you want to watch football or any TV, stay your ass out of jail!
“”"Maybe they need to quit hiring young lonely vulnerable women…I watched a will fall in love with prisoners..makes me ashamed to be female that so women are so gullable.”"”
I do not know whoever thought that the employment of women at a men’s penal facility was a good idea. I would not allow it nor would allow men to work at a women prison. That is just asking for trouble.
“”"When you have a huge crowd of prisoners with time on their hands and no privileges to take away, some are going to escape no matter what kind of wall or fence you build.”"”
Not true. There are prisons in this country where nobody has escaped. They do not allow prisoners to roam about the complex. Prisoners get an hour a day in the yard by themselves and 23 hours a day in their cells. That is the way prisons should be.
I really feel that they should go back to the ball and chain! Extremely minimal security would be needed, nobody could drag a 40 to 50 lb lead ball very far, or very fast. Maybe even go high tech, with a GPS device in it. Even better, make it high explosive, once it’s so many feet from a transmitter, it explodes. You could have prisons with no walls, no fences, and maybe get by with remotely located tent cities!
“I will not advocate what Mary said- there are many former and present young single women who have worked for the prison and did NOT do something like this. It’s wrong to discriminate against women this way Mary.
Besides the last one was a married older female.”
And how many MALE guards have helped prisoners escape, PMom?I don’t mean to generalize that way…but there are too many women who are taken in by predatory, antisocial men..otherwise our system wouldn’t be so overloaded with women trying escape from abusive husbands and boyfriends. Women has a culture need to be more independant, not codependant…and what the hell happened to the women’s movement? So many young girls nowadays think they can’t survive without some guy attached to them at the hip. Makes me sad and angry for this many in this generation of women coming up.
Just how it was possible for someone to stand outside the perimeter fence, throw 2 wire cutters ALL the way over that fence, over at least one more fence and into a particular exercise area that is not only fenced but also covered with fencing?
How was it someone was able to stand outside the perimeter fence, waiting till just the right time for the inmates to have cut through all the other fences, and THEN cut that outside fence, all the while being seen by no one?Why are they increasing the strength of the fences around the exercise yard with “heavy-duty mesh”, was it not heavy duty prior to this? Are they saying that they were using substandard fencing for a prison?Why the delay in releasing information about the internal investigation that they stated was being done on November 20, 2007? Why are they not making any comments to that? Doesnt the public have a right to know all the details of this incident that took placer literally in their own back yards?Why do they say this is the first successful escape? Isnt it true another inmate actually forged his own release papers and was allowed out of the prison and it took them months to get him back? ( Not sure if this is true or not but worth looking into I would think)Are they completely confident in the fact that there was no one else involved in this? If so how do they explain the impossibility of someone actually throwing wire cutters into the inmates, while it is actually more plausable that the inmates had these items on their person when they entered the exercise yard that evening?
What if anything was noted and recorded on the security cameras that should have been recording all activity that evening around the entire prison system?
Exactly where was either one of the Prison Officers that were to be patrolling the perimeter of the prison and have a response time of less than 1 minute in the event of an alarm going off? Why did it take several minutes for anyone to respond?
How was it possible for any vehicle to of been parked for any length of time within any reachable distance of the prison and not be noticed by someone?
Exactly what is their methods for handling inmate threats that are made against their officers?
What procedures do FORMER guards follow to report threats they recieve AFTER they end their employment there ( for whatever reason it ended), what recourse do they have?—–
TO:Maybe their should be a rule about ex employee’s bringing wire cutters in the compound
Posted by: Tom Paine | November 14, 2007 at 11:08 AM
It WAS NOT an EX employee who did this……it was a CURRENT employee. The bigger questions should be just how did the inmates manage to hide these things??? Where was the cell/person searches?