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First Posted: 9/25/2013 (AP) The escape of eight inmates from an unattended van in Oklahoma highlights problems with private prison transport companies that don't face the same scrutiny as state corrections systems, officials said Wednesday.
If the transport van belonged to the state's prison system, the offenders would never have been left unattended, Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie told The Associated Press.
"It's DOC policy: You don't leave them out of your sight," Massie said in an interview Wednesday.
State corrections policy also maintains that during any transport, "all offenders will be considered high risk" and the transporting officer "will not stop the vehicle for any unnecessary purpose."
"I'm just glad they weren't our prisoners," Massie said.
The inmates escaped Tuesday after guards employed by Prisoner Transportation Services of Nashville, Tenn., had stopped in Weatherford to deliver one or two sick inmates to a hospital.
Guards left the inmates alone in the van, with the keys inside and the van apparently still running. Two prisoners kicked out a partition and moved into the front of the van.
The inmates were from jails in the western and northern United States and were being transported among agencies in the same regions of the country.
Weatherford is about an hour west of Oklahoma City on Interstate 40.
All eight prisoners were back in police custody by late Tuesday and are being held in the Weatherford city jail until the Nashville company sends a replacement van to pick them up, Assistant Police Louis Flowers said Wednesday.
"I'm not going to comment on the policies of a private company," Flowers said Wednesday. "Our policy in our department wouldn't leave a prisoner in a van by himself or a transport van like that."
Thor Catalogne, an owner of the transport company, declined comment Wednesday on his company's policies.
Police said the van traveled about a mile before stopping. Two inmates ran away while the other six stayed nearby. Officers recovered a 12-gauge shotgun that had been inside the vehicle. No injuries were reported.
Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford was locked down for about two hours while police searched for the two inmates who ran away.
The pair, Lester Burns and Michael Coleman, were taken into custody in Weatherford. Coleman was being held for assault and Burns for failure to pay child support, police said.
Critics of private prison transportation companies have complained that they are poorly regulated.
"This is an example of what happens when we privatize functions that belonged to the government," said Richard Allen Smith, a spokesman for In The Public Interest, a Washington-based research and policy nonprofit that studies the effects privatization has on communities. "We lose two things: transparency and accountability.
"We've seen this in many sectors, specifically with the prison system, when we contract and outsource public services," he said in an interview Wednesday.
<a title="Associated Press" href="http://www.ap.org" class="url org fn">Associated Press</a>

Private firms under scrutiny after Okla. escape