NWA editorial: A killer gets loose

Complacency to blame, but so are policies

How did a man convicted of murdering 16-year-old Angela Allen of Van Buren escape from prison last month?

Complacency, the state's prison director says.

What’s the point?

Complacency played a role in a killer’s escape from prison, but prison system policies also set the stage for high-risk behaviors.

If you're someone who lives near any of Arkansas' prison units, that's got to be reassuring.

A crew of 16 inmates, two guards and two construction supervisors were busy trying to move a mobile home to a spot closer to the prison facility. Among the inmates was Lloyd Jones, 40, of Sebastian County. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to first-degree murder in Allen's death, acknowledging he stuffed her body into a barrel and buried it. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

So, hey, why not put this guy on a work crew outside the prison walls? What could possibly happen?

Jones escaped. That's what. And he spent three days eluding searchers as prison officials (hopefully) lost a lot of sleep while they contemplated what a man capable of such brutality might do with his new-found freedom. He was re-captured June 16, having apparently committed no additional acts of violence. What a relief.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson ordered a review in his typical low-key style, but this was about as big a catastrophe the state's prison system can be a part of. In theory, after law enforcement officers, prosecutors and the judiciary do their jobs, the state's Department of Correction's specialty is its capacity to keep murderers from regaining their freedom.

Killing a teenage girl apparently qualifies an inmate for outside-the-prison work details. He wore not handcuffs. He wore no shackles on his legs. He certainly wasn't reduced to being stuffed inside a barrel. He got to be on the work crew under armed guard.

Wendy Kelley, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, this week shared details of Jones' escape. During lunch, one security officer departed the job site to transport a prisoner and have his own lunch. The two construction supervisors took two inmates to install some butane bottles and take their lunch break. That left one guard on site with 13 remaining inmates, some of whom were working underneath the mobile home. Well, three were perhaps working. One was plotting. One was looking for opportunity. And state employees waltzing through just another routine day handed him that very opportunity.

At some point, that guard counted the inmates. It added up to one short. To no one's surprise, surely, an inmate already facing, for all intents and purposes, the rest of his life in prison saw nothing to lose by walking away.

Yes, complacency. That's a good description for it. Part of being a guard, of protecting Arkansans from people judged to require incarceration, is keeping one's guard up. You snooze, you lose (a killer).

But complacency on the part of the guards is only part of the story. Isn't it just as critical -- maybe even more so -- to ask why prison policies permit putting the brutal killer of a teenage girl on a work crew outside the confines of the prison? How many times are murderers given the opportunity that Jones took advantage of?

When the state devotes so much time and resources to putting a killer behind bars, what work is so vital that it cannot be done by inmates who didn't kill?

Once someone has killed, what is worth the risk of allowing them to regain their freedom?

Nothing.

Commentary on 07/01/2016

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