BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COLUMBUS -- Alarms sounded, but no one responded. Guards were stationed, but in the wrong places. And one guard left his post to go to the restroom.
Those were the circumstances Warden Jimmy Turner cited Tuesday as he tried to tell state lawmakers how six inmates escaped unnoticed July 25 from Ohio's only privately run prison, the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown. One escapee remains at large.
"What happened that Saturday afternoon was human error. . . . The decisions that people made that day were wrong," said Mr. Turner, who works for Corrections Corp. of America (CCA). "The shame that I feel as a warden is tremendous."
But interested legislators -- including members of the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, a bipartisan group charged with monitoring Ohio's prisons -- said they're having trouble getting CCA, the prison's operator, based in Nashville, Tenn., to disclose information.
"We're being stonewalled. I feel like I'm sitting through a corporate press briefing," Rep. Mark Mallory, D-Cincinnati, a prison committee member, complained as he took a break from the committee's hearing Tuesday.
"You don't hear their corporate people saying anything about the two murders and (at least 13) stabbings that happened there. I think the number of incidents shows serious problems with how CCA is managing it -- and it's hard to figure out even what's going on there."
The committee is studying problems at the Youngstown prison and possible legislative remedies; its hearing is expected to resume today with testimony from law enforcement officials, the Youngstown city attorney and the union that represents state prison employees.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery on Monday issued an opinion stating that closing the prison would be difficult if not impossible under current law. But Tuesday, some people asked the committee to recommend it be closed and turned over to the state; others recommend tighter controls on private prisons.
Among the harshest critics is State Sen. Robert Hagan, D-Youngstown, who lives a mile from the prison, which opened in May 1997.
In a blistering written statement to the committee, he said CCA has repeatedly broken its promises to run a safe facility during its 14 months in Youngstown -- and now citizens are demanding lawmakers act to protect them.
He didn't call for the prison to close just yet, but warns that if CCA takes one more misstep, "I will lead the charge to run CCA out of Youngstown forever, to recover monetary damages for the harm this corporation has done to our area and to spread the word across the country of the contemptible conduct of this rogue corporation."
In the meantime, he's calling for tight restrictions on CCA, including fines if certain conditions aren't met and a moratorium on building private prisons in Ohio.
"Ohio's private prison experiment is a disastrous failure that should not be repeated," he said.
State Sen. Louis Blessing Jr., R-Cincinnati, has supported the idea of private prisons and is urging his fellow committee members not to rush to judgment based on the Youngstown crisis.
Others on the prison committee, such as Sen. Jeff Johnson, D-Cleveland, said they feel uncomfortable about prisons being run for profit. He says the notion of "a commodity being someone you keep rather than a product that you manufacture" bothers him, let alone the problems at CCA's Youngstown facility.
A CCA lawyer, Timothy J. Bojanowski of Ashtabula, Ohio, repeatedly instructed Warden Turner and other CCA officials to withhold information about the escapes, citing federal authorities' admonitions to refrain from commenting while the escapes remain under investigation.
Mr. Johnson said he thinks CCA's lack of responsiveness arises from "a fundamental problem": CCA's first responsibility is to make a profit for its shareholders -- not to protect the safety of Ohio citizens.
Washington, D.C., which sent more than 1,500 inmates to the Youngstown facility, is paying CCA $55 per day, per inmate -- or about $82,500 a day.
But in his testimony to the committee, Mr. Turner, a warden in CCA facilities for almost 10 years, countered, "Every day . . . my No. 1 priority is public safety."
In his limited discussion of the escapes, Mr. Turner did reveal some previously undisclosed details. Until Tuesday, CCA had laid blame on a sole employee, an unnamed female who allegedly helped the inmates get wire cutters, which they used to penetrate two fences.
Mr. Turner said records show that sensors, placed to detect motion around the prison's fences, triggered alarms between 2:30 and 2:35 p.m. -- but prison officials didn't learn of the escapes until 2:40 p.m. He didn't say what alerted officials to the escape, but Youngstown officials have said an inmate told a guard, who then saw holes in the fences.
Five guards are supposed to be stationed around the prison's recreation yards when they're in use, but one guard "chose to go to the restroom," Mr. Turner said. The other four weren't positioned where they were supposed to be, either, he said. Also, two guards are supposed to patrol outside the prison fences, but one of those guards was away from his assigned area, too, Mr. Turner said.
Mr. Turner reassured the committee that measures were being taken to prevent a recurrence: additional razor wire and more sensors are being installed, along with a watch tower. Also, the number of perimeter guards is being doubled, to four, and disciplinary action is pending against the guards who weren't at their assigned posts.
Rep. Ron Gerberry, D-Canfield, whose district includes the county where the prison is, said that since Mr. Turner became warden in March, he has noticed some improvements at the prison.
But he, too, complained of lack of information from prison officials. Pondering Mr. Turner's statements about the escapes, Mr. Gerberry said, "I don't get why they didn't chase them when the alarm went off. I don't get it. Maybe someday I'll get answers. If this was a state institution, I'd get answers."
