BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COLUMBUS -- Prison officials delayed telling police that six inmates had escaped from Ohio's only private prison July 25 -- and then denied that the escapes even happened after someone inside the Youngstown prison called 911 to report it, a sheriff says.
"They follow the code of silence," said Philip A. Chance Jr., sheriff of Mahoning County, where the prison is located. "It's very difficult to get a straight answer out of any of them."
Sheriff Chance testified Wednesday before a prison oversight committee and alleged a pattern of deception, secrecy and lack of emergency planning at the prison operated by Corrections Corp. of America (CCA).
Officials of the Nashville-based company have said they promote excellence, want to be a good corporate neighbor to Youngstown, and were doing everything they could to correct problems.
In its 14 1/2-month history, the prison has seen at least 13 stabbings, two homicides and the incident of six escapes, but legislators aren't sure how to respond because the private prisons business is new to Ohio.
"The ongoing problems at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown should serve as a wake-up call to the nation," said U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., D-Youngstown. "We need to identify possible security and personnel shortfalls at private prisons, and effectively address them."
Mr. Traficant on Tuesday gained House approval of a Justice Department budget amendment that would require a federal study of prison privatization.
The study, which the federal Bureau of Prisons is to complete in nine months, would trace the private prison industry's growth and evaluate private companies' standards, training and security methods.
Later this week, Mr. Traficant also intends to offer an amendment to the Washington, D.C., budget bill, which would strengthen the inmate screening process "to ensure that only low- and medium-security inmates are housed at the (Youngstown) facility."
Improperly classified inmates have caused most of the problems, Youngstown officials have said.
Under agreements with Youngstown and the Washington, D.C., prisons department, CCA is supposed to be running a "medium-security" prison. Such prisons are generally reserved for low-level felons, or for more serious felons who have several years of good conduct in prison.
Instead, D.C. officials sent some of their most violent, predatory inmates -- and Youngstown leaders blame CCA for letting them in.
"By allowing the worst of inmates from Washington, D.C., to be brought to our area, it appears that CCA has only a profit motive in mind as opposed to our concerns for public safety," Sheriff Chance said. "They treated our area like a dump site -- and furthermore, they were unprepared to handle the violence that occurred inside that facility."
Sen. Rhine McLin, D-Dayton, who chairs the Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, said, "You have a sophisticated inmate at this institution, compared to neophyte corrections officers -- if you want to call them that."
Although five escapees who are convicted killers were recaptured within 72 hours of the prison break, the sixth -- an armed robber who is wanted on a murder charge -- is thought to have crossed the U.S. border into Canada, Sheriff Chance said Wednesday.
CCA officials estimate the escape went undetected for about 10 minutes before they learned of it at 2:40 p.m. July 25.
CCA's warden, Jimmy Turner, told the prisons committee Tuesday he was upset to learn that six of seven guards were away from their assigned posts at the time of the escape. They face disciplinary action; a guard who may have helped the inmates get wire cutters is under criminal investigation.
Mr. Turner, who was not working the day of the escapes, said his employees paged him around 3 p.m. that day -- and they notified Youngstown-area law enforcement soon after.
But Rep. Mark Mallory, D-Cincinnati, noted that Mr. Turner's version of events differs markedly from the sheriff's. Sheriff Chance alleges a long delay -- at least 40 minutes and possibly an hour -- before CCA told local police about the escapes.
Besides delaying notifying police, CCA at first denied an escape had even happened, Sheriff Chance said.
Someone used a prison pay phone to call 911 and tell a Youngstown police dispatcher about the escape. But when the dispatcher called the prison to verify it, a CCA employee said there was no escape, Sheriff Chance said. That call reportedly came after 3 p.m., more than 20 minutes after officials knew there was an escape.
If CCA had succeeded in recapturing the escapees without outside help, it's likely that no one ever would have learned about the escapes, Sheriff Chance said.
That statement, he said, is based on his experience with CCA's failure to report crimes, such as stabbings and assaults, to law enforcement officials.
