ALC-Charitable, Penal, and Correctional Institutions
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- October 2, 2026
Speaker 3
0:18
Thank you lord for today thank you for the opportunity to to gather
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
0:21
today and do the work of the people where we ask for your your grace and just thinking about this last week of horrible things that we've seen in this country followed by great things we've seen in this country country coming together to to serve you and honor you and and be grateful for what you've done for us and so we are doing that today as well we're grateful for your blessing for this great state and we ask that you just give us your wisdom that only comes from you to
have our eyes fixed on you and and hopefully make wise decisions I think for this time to meet together and dosus and pray amen. thank you senator dees
OK, we will go to the first thing on our agenda and they're walking in the room so if you just want to keep on walking right down to that front table we will go to the discussion of the Arkansas Department of Corrections critical incident report revolving
prisoner escape from calico rockck. we appreciate your attendance today if you'd introduce yourself for the record you are recognized Well I sat down fastest so I'll starttawnyhughes
Speaker 7
1:40
chief legal counsel department oforrection. dexter Payne director for the vision oforrection. Lindsey Wallace secretary for
Speaker 12
1:50
the department of Corrections, I apologize in advance. You recognize you you guys you ought to carry the
load today and let Secretary Wallace take it easy. I like the way you think if you just want to jump right into going through the report you're welcome to and then we'll let members ask questions as they occur. Yes sir Mr Chairman dexter
Speaker 17
2:22
Payne, director for divisionalorrection. we want to go over the critical incident report for the north central escape I'll go ahead and and basically read our summary on May25,2025 at approximately 2:53 p.m. inmate Grant hardness assigned as a one sea kitchen worker escaped from the north central unit by walking through the sallyport gates dressed in a homemade uniform designed to impersonate a correctional officer. He was pulling a flat cart containing a cardboard box and a homemade
ladder later determined to be constructed from dismantled pallets and drawstrings from state-issued clothing at approximately 1:58 p.m. in emy Harding was granted unsupervised access to the kitchen back dock under the pretense of cleaning the chemical cage this violated standing security directives that specifically prohibited inmates from being on the back dock without supervision. Directors clearly communicated to kitchen staff and acknowledged in writing on May1 42025 It made Harding remained
unsupervised for approximately 1 hour and 8 minutes which gave him ample opportunity to change into the disguise he used to facilitate his escape. ro und 308 pm the food service supervisor noticed Harden was not on the back dock area and began to search to locate him by telephoning the laundry in west tower staff after being unable to locate inmate Harden, he advised the shift supervisor of the incident and a more extensive search of the immediate area began but was unsuccessful
Review of surveillance footage by the shift commander revealed an individual later confirmed as inmate Harden walking through the s both sally port gates dressed in a dark uniform with a vest and a hat pulling a cart he was last seen walking near the ICC garage with a box in hand before disappearing from the camera view at approximately3:40 pm. the unit was placed on lockdown emergency escape procedures were activated in the command center was established a roster count was conducted
at3:47 p.m. confirming he made hardin's absence. All other inmates were accounted for by4:48 p.m. 17 internal and perimeter checkpoints were activated in the unit's K9 team began searching the facility grounds the box scene on the surveillance footage was located behind the ICC garage and a homemade ladder was found nearby a facilitywide investigation into the breach identified critical failures in protocol. a directive to all food service staff before this incident was
that no inmates were allowed access to the kitchen back dock area without direct staff supervision the on duty supervising staff member disregarded this policy allowing inmate hardden access to a sensitive area despite having acknowledged this violated a previous directive camera footage and as followed and follow up interviews confirmed this failure. Additionally the west tower officer admitted to observing an individual on the back dog dressed similarly to a staff member
but leaving the person to be an employee, the officer allowed the individual later it identified as Harden to pass through both sally port gates without verifying identity or issuing a challenge. from May25th through June6th the facility remained locked down the command posts remain operational throughout the duration of the search the command post coordinated ground and aerial searches gathered intelligence and worked with local and state local state and federal law enforcement partners local residents were
also notified of the escape through phone alerts and coordination with local authorities to ensure public safety and awareness on June6th at approximately3:45 p.m. it made Harden was located by the USorder Patrol approximately 1.5 miles northwest of off the north central unit in a densely wooded area his identity was confirmed using a portable fingerprint scanner provided by the Arkansas Statelice after a medical evaluation they made Harden was immediately transferred to the Varner supermax facility for
high security confinement a comprehensive review of the incident confirmed that the escape resulted from multiple failures in staff adherence to established policies the makeshift uniform was found to be made from a state-issued pair of pants a white t shirt a ball cap and a kitchen apron all of which were dyed black. It made hard unsupervised time on the back dock allowed him to dawn the disguise and prepare for the escape a secondary failure occurred when the sallyor west tower procedures
were not followed and identity verification was not performed unfortunately this allowed and made Harden to exit the facility unchallenged and what we found from the critical incident revieww we've we've had to discipline multiple staff members for also failure to
Speaker 20
7:24
adhere to policy including terminating one other suspending several OK anything to add
then we will open it up to questions from members if there are any I know that we've heard some of this before but now that they've had time to release the port and members have had report and members have had a chance to digest it Representative Nazarenko you're recognized thank you Mr Chairman. and thank
yourector Payne. I appreciate the the information so this my question about the escape policy update
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
8:07
can I cover that piece right now just a question on that sir OK so on there on about halfway down it's talking about a subject
matter reporting system can you give more detail on that subject matter reporting system it's like bullet3 on therepresentative actually took I actually the one who
Speaker 32
8:24
drafted this director Payne had a chance to look at it but he wasn't actually in the meeting where we talked about this in detail with his chief deputy director so one of the unique situations that we find
ourselves in at corrections is that we have some really specialized individuals who work in central office and at the office of the secretary dealing with things like classification and you know we think about our business operations employees we think about human resources records things like that but we also have to have people at the units who do all of those things and those individuals all report up to the warden of that unit the warden is usually really great at security and they know
a little bit about a lot of these things but they're not the experts and one of the frustrations that the chief deputy director in his classification administrator expressed to me was when you look on the critical incident revieww you see that inmate Harden had not had his classification refreshed in quite some time it had been several years right? and the classification administrator who works at central office she said she says over and over again at their meetings that they have of all the classification staff
that they need to be doing that unfortunately she has no authority to to discipline. She doesn't really get input on their performance evaluations so one of the things that we proposed was that for those positions at the units where they have very specialized knowledge sets we build sort of a dotted line and say hey your warden's going to deal with your day to day but at the end of at the end of your performance evaluation period or when something like like this occurs the subject matter experts are
going to have some ability to discipline or weigh in on your performance evaluation so we're hopeful that that's going to kind of stem some of those issues great uhrector Payne, so I
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
10:17
know on the last meeting you talked quite a bit about the the C5 custody score and how that was that was
misrepresented over it wasn't correct and then he would never have been inmate Harden should never have been there in the first place but I know one of the things that kind of caught my eye on that is that's a that's a classification that is going to be given to that individual inmate as
they're in processed or or whatever I think is how you kind of explain that my my question is this is there any kind of an internal classification because inmate Harden had prior military background, or prior police background so I'm thinking military and police background is going to have some kind of training . I know I spent 23 years in the service I've got different training that would behoove you know to be classified in some way internally is there any kind of internal classification of anything when an inmate's in
custody that has any kind of you know prior service that would indicate any kind of special training that they might have. Oh inside of
Speaker 17
11:22
our oma system we do mark any any training or any prior jobs that they do have that's added in there we asked the inmates you know but it's it's basically inmatedrin you know whatever answers he gives if he if he says he's been in the military40 years I mean we don't have a a necessary way to argue it unless we get this dd24. so we do
talk to them and interview them and get those answers from the inmate you know and it
Speaker 40
11:46
it may not necessarily always be true and I think Secretary Wallace had something to yes sir I just wanted to add
Speaker 42
11:52
that coming out of these conversations like we've talked about this before and how we could have alerted our staff more and I apologize for my voice if you're having a hard time hearing me but there is an offender alert that we can put on sort of our landing page in our offender management system so that it it kind of alerts staff to look for certain things whenever you're looking
at the offender's kind of analyzing them as they're going through the process and we've started looking at that and I think more significant now thank you thank
Chair
Unverified
12:21
you Mr Chair Senator deeses you're recognized
thank you Mr Chair and thank
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
12:29
you Miss Wallace, Miss Hughes and Mr. Payne for being here today. two quick questions related to classifications as
well I really appreciate the the due diligence on the explanation of C3 versus C5 that
was helpful to see and so just two quick questions. the first is when I see it described in the report about the error of of the point system can I get a little clarification on is is that a subjective error that you know, I see one of the bullet points he should have he was given 10 points when he should have been given fi5 some prior offences where he should have had 20 was was not accounted
are those typing errors are they subjection errors help me understand the error of that entrance senator so what we have is a system
Speaker 7
13:25
that does its absolute best to automate as much of this as possible and but there are unique situations the
Speaker 32
13:30
10 points when it should have been 15 points I've spent a fair amount of time clicking around in ayoas trying to replicate it every time I punch it in I get 15 points so I have no idea what happened there. It was a very long time ago and I think that
probably that might just be academic at this point on the violent offense that is a situation where if we have it and it's a completed sentence then our offender management system can grab that what we didn't have in this scenario was a completed sentence because of the timing of how he was convicted. it was a really unique scenario I think compared to what we usually see where it's very linear in nature so what we always need to have is a second set of eyes and a human element because we
couldn't possibly program a system that captures every single one of these elements or it would you know, dwarf it would be the biggest contract in site history so I I think that what we're working on is a training mechanism and some common sense fixes so one of the ones we were discussing earlier was looking at the sex offenders so sex offenders are supposed to have at least 20 points just by virtue of being a sex offender it's very easy for us to identify in our data if somebody's a sex offender if we're made aware of it because
we have a flag for it just like Secretary Wallace was speaking about we had an old report where there were a fair number of sex offenders. I don't know the exact number but it was probably around 100 if I'm if I'm remembering correctly who we had indicated were a sex offender and they had less than 20 points on their classification score and we just know that that can't be right so what we're able to do through business object reporting is kind of catch that low hanging fruit while we work on this
comprehensive classification reform that we're working on that makes sense with a lot of automation
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
15:26
that has led to this and that was a 2019 entrance so we've the technology has advanced since then is what I'm hearing as well and then the the last question would be with with current inmates at North Central or maybe similar facilities we have are we confident that everyone is classified correctly now with knowing that circumstances have happened in
the past where point systems could have could have had issues. Do we feel good about reviewing that nobody is over the threshold of um51 to71 I think I'm reading that correctly how confident are we am I reading that right and offenders with a score of51 to71 is not eligible to be at North Central unit are we confident that inmates at North Central today aren't exceeding the limit that they should be or or misclassification there yes sir I'm pretty confident our classification administrator
Speaker 17
16:20
and and one of her staff have went through all the inmates there and we're working throughout the system to make sure everybody's correct correctly classific classified but hey with almost 18,000 inmates is gonna take us you know a little bit of time but we we were sure North C central should be classified correctly at this time thank you you mentioned I believe a
classification committee of some kind did I hear correctly well I talked about a classification committee and
Speaker 35
16:50
probably a classification study. Are those are those things that exist already or
have existed are they something that we would like to see la s s ific ation
Speaker 32
17:00
committees have existed as long as I know and they take into account a lot of different factors it's not just gonna be your kind of static factors that you come into the unit
with. Are do they help with the the design of the automated system and how the inputs are recorded or in just and judged well so we have a
Speaker 32
17:20
private contractor doing that just because they have a lot more academic base if I can just speak really freely I think that a lot of times people get very entrenched in a system and they're maybe not willing to take a step back and look at you know, everything very holistically and that's Secretary Wallace felt pretty strongly I hope I'm not speaking for her that we probably did need a very neutral third party to look at it so they're not involved right now and that contractor has the data from us her analysis of it is almost complete and she is looking in
the next week or two to start scheduling site visits just so she can build rapport and kind of work on the buy in with that's kind of an audit of the existing system it's two parts it's going to be are we doing it correctly just based on what our scoring system is and then also is our scoring system right there's kind of two parts to that OK and with respect to the
committee itself did they have like a annual meeting did they meet every quarter? what was their duties with respect to the classifications
they meet weekly and that they had met weekly and this was just missed OK thank
Speaker 65
18:36
you Senator Johnson. thank you guys for coming after you made your report so I'm going off of memory somewhat but I'm gonna tag on to what represented Nazarenko talked about so you know if you flag this individual with his background so from memory he was incarcerated
and doing the job longer than either of his supervisors which bore some of the disciplinary action and if you got a a person in that situation it would it not be good policy to move him to a different job where he has not been there as long as as the supervisor cause I think he was there twice as long
as one of the doc supervisors and one of the kitchen staff who was there at least two or three years longer than that person so I mean you know some folks you know with the background he had are very observant and and that's why he was able to get by with some of the things he did because of his observation and background you either move move move units with those people or move them to a different job am I wrong in that I think that's a pretty good
Speaker 17
19:54
observation and I mean that's something we definitely consider but it may not happen with with all all of the inmates that we have we they may not move them in a in a you know in a two year period or five year period but it
Speaker 70
20:09
is something that we can consider in this classification study
Speaker 42
20:15
may help us with that completely agree withrector Payne but I think also what the critical incident review will show and andardden himself said the staff just got lax. There
were staff in there that were checking where he had all of his things that were stored but when they left there were they were not doing the security checks that they were supposed to and so yes I think addressing it the way that you talked about looking at seeing if they're shifting him around maybe if it's not moving to another institution. maybe it's moving to a different part but the biggest thing was the staff were not performing the jobs that they were supposed to. Well if you got somebody with that background sir they're going to take advantage of every
Speaker 65
20:56
situation and and we just gotta have the policy to be able to to have the best controls we can and I appreciate y'all sir Representative beatty well I I just had a a question
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
21:13
that came in from from a committee member who can't be here today and let's see if I can I can get this out here I I guess something that was said in
in this is in your report is that there was a memo or a directive about unsupervised inmates on on the loading dock and and on the dock but I guess in the article in the dem gas there was maybe some conflicting reports about the food services managers and others saying there was no directive so can you provide the committee with that directive and the date of that directive yes sir I'll provide the committee with that thank you Representativeanzarenko
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
22:08
Thank you Mr chairman thank you one last question I appreciate appreciate the chair allowing me to ask these, it just kind of brought it up with Senator Johnson's question you know, back on that classification because it's exactly what I was looking at and you you all made the the mention of the that the inmate would have to kind of give you information if they were military with the DU24. are there are there quite a few inmates right now in the system that our prior police officers
Speaker 77
22:41
Yes sir we we have several that are prior police officers as well as prior
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
22:47
military ok and are they identified then in some sort of self identification because they would be
I'm gonna assume that they have access to clest while there a police officer where they can go in as much as they want and in the training episodes they can take as much that training as they want and in fact they have required training and then if they're military no telling what they have for training is that something that's identified
to where this could be you know identified in the future where we're going to make sure we're gonna avoid someone who has possibility of additional training to be able to exploit anything out there yes sir and and
Speaker 17
23:25
most of our law enforcement officers are in protective custody at one of our facilities so we definitely know who they are. militaryries is a little different because you have so many and and like I said it's a self report on the military but once we do know who they are yes
sir we we have veteran barracks and and things of that nature at a
Speaker 40
23:45
couple of our facilities ok and I think when
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
23:51
you say selfport I believe if we pull up the military record there's an open source information on something and I mean if it says I can tell you right now if it saysir or C or ear AB you know you may want to put a star
Speaker 32
24:04
by him so thank youpresentative if I can just add because there was legislation that came out of this session and we are working to bolster our data sharing with various military departments
just so that we can do a better job identifying not just for this purpose but also for the purpose of trying to set them up with the appropriate resources when they leave our custody. excellent thank
you thank you Mr. Chairman OK, my board is empty so you are free to go for the time being. thank you very much for being here Members we're going to move to the state police investigation report who do we have here? All right.
you guys will come down and introduce yourself for the record we'll recognize you My name
Speaker 91
25:09
is Drakechampagne. I'm an agent with thepecialvestigations unit of
Speaker 93
25:16
the Arkansas State Police. Drakechampagne Mike McNeil Arkansas
Speaker 95
25:22
Statelice special investigations unit thank you gentlemen both for being here. I'm just gonna
kind of turn you loose if you want to do I don't know if
you have a summary or something like that you'd like to go through and then we'll open it up for
Speaker 95
25:37
questions right thank you good afternoon Mr chair and committee members as we all know inmate Grant Hardden escaped from the Arkansas Department of Corrections on May25th
, 2025 as a result of that the Arkansas state police was directed to conduct an administrative investigation into the investig into the escape we focused in three main areas regarding that administrative investigation one the circumstances and manner of
inmate hardden's escape 2 the timeline and adequacy of notifications made to law enforcement and to the public by the Arkansas Department of Corrections and three we looked at the policies of the Arkansas department of Corrections specifically regarding escape and tried to identify any concerns or areas that needed to be addressed
it is our understanding that this committee has been provided a copy of the investigative file and if you have specific questions for us we're more than happy to be here and and answer those questions as best as we can if you'd like just go into some information in our summary I can do that as well.
OK members I I think that we were provided the file yesterday or staff was provided the file yesterday around4:20. it's a 900 ppage report and so that's too big to just email to you so I believe the report is online on the website you can view it there I think you could also pull it up on your documents for this meeting on the screen in front of you but if you have any questions for the state police you'd be welcome to ask them now or
I I hate that we just got it yesterday no that's fine and I know
that wasn't your fault but until the committee has a chance to review it
Speaker 95
28:09
I don't know that there's going to be a lot of questions well a a central question in the investigation was how did inmate Harden get on the back dock unsupervised and the investigation clearly shows that the policy at the north central unit that had been in place for
many years allowed for inmates assigned to cleaning duties to be on the back dock unsupervised and and that's in the in the file that that you guys have so over the course of you know over a year almost two years inmate Harden by policy was allowed to access the back dock and remain out there for periods of time up to30
minutes to over an hour with no supervision now information provided by the warden and deputy wardden they state that approximately one month prior to the escape they recognized that inmates were on the back dock unsupervised and that that was a concern so at that time they instructed the four kitchen
supervisors and the kitchen manager that inmates were not to be on the back dock unsupervised anymore so that was a that was a verbal directive that was in conflict with established north central unit policy so we fast forward to I believe it was May14th approximately two weeks before the escape. there was a staff meeting
where the manager of the kitchen provided information to the four supervisors of the kitchen and in this staff meeting this is the the document that representatives from the Arkansas department of Corrections reference when they say that supervisors signed and acknowledged that inmates were not to be on the back dock unsupervised well in this staff meeting all of the supervisors signed the signed
the the document acknowledging that they were present for the staff meeting but nowhere in that document is their language regarding the supervision of inmates on the back dock when the when the manager was interviewed the kitchen manager who presented this meeting to the supervisors he referenced one of the bullet points that highlighted the you know something
regarding to making sure that the back door stay locked and and his statement was that he furthered that bullet point in conversation with the supervisors and and articulated that that inmates were not to be on the back dock unsupervised when we interviewed the the supervisors who attended this meeting three of them indicated that that that was not
relayed to them and one of them said that it was so we we have some some confusion on whether or not this verbal directive was appropriately articulated to the supervisors of the kitchen. we've we've like I said we've got three of them that say it wasn't told to him and we've got one of them that says that it was
and you know again a verbal directive can be given that is in contradiction to established policy that's fine but if if that happens the scenario should be that the administration at the north central unit then take the steps necessary to change the policy they they need to have meetings
that you know of the of the leadership there and of the administration and of members of the of the staff there's a review process and ultimately the the warden would sign off on any policy changes so by the verbal directive being given that that's fine but the investigation shows that the the verbal directive if it was given it was given
approximately a month prior to the escape and there was no action taken by the administration to formally change the policy regarding inmate supervision on the back dock. so that that was concerning
the the garard in the tower you know the I believe the investigation clearly
Speaker 96
33:56
shows that he there there was a lack of vivii vigilance there and by his own admission there was complacency there he was clearly at fault
Speaker 95
34:18
you know not verifying who it was that was wanting to leave the facility I know that there was some discussion in in prior meetings or prior hearings that was his behavior reckless I don't think it was whenever you you try to categorize something as reckless from my understanding
is that the the person conducting the reckless behavior needs to do so knowingly and the investigation clearly shows that the the tower guard would have never opened the gate if he knew that that was Grant hardin wanting to exit the facility you know due to inmate Harden's disguise and
lack of vigilance by the tower guard you know that that those were factors significant factors in Harden being allowed to to leave the property but I don't believe that that it would be considered reckless because of the fact that the guard would not have done that if he had properly identified the individual
on that point the did your investigation determine whether or not that was the first and only time that that guard let someone out without checking theiridd or was that commonplace practice? I I believe the
Speaker 95
36:10
investigation shows that it is the responsibility of the guard to when when someone approaches to exit the tower
that they go out onto the catwalk and they identify the individual if if they if that individual is a is an employee of the prison or you know someone that would be normally allowed to to come and go then the the tower guard can can open that gate you know how many times this happened prior to inmate hard and
escaping I I have no idea.. thank
you Representative Beatty did you have a
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
36:59
question Well, I maybe just just clarification. we're
talking about super supervision and and supervised on the on the dot but that could be direct supervision or I read somewhere in the report that it was it was custom customary practice to notify the guard tower that inmate was going to be on the dock
unsupervised did did I I think I read that somewhere in here so our are we are we straight on the meeting they had was for direct supervision on the loading dock is that what the the one member was citing and the the kitchen manager said direct supervision meaning that a a guard was with that prisoner on the back dock versus just notifying the tower that there's gonna be a prisoner an inmate out on the on the dock yes that
Speaker 95
37:54
was our understanding that there needed to be direct supervision not just not ify ing a a tower se5 yards away thank you
Speaker 96
38:13
other issues of concern that that were identified involved the the policy structure of
Speaker 95
38:24
the Arkansas department of Corrections there are essentially three levels the the secretarial directives the administrative directives and the unit directives essentially the secretarial directive the policy indicates that the Arkansas department of Corrections internal affairs administrator
would be responsible for notifying state and local law enforcement in the event of an escape. the admini the administrative directive states that there's a commander's checklist and essentially the the warden would be responsible for notifying state and local law enforcement and then you have the the policy at the unit level the policy
at the north central unit directed the staff to contact the pine bluff radio room who showed to be the one responsible for notifying local and state in regards to to an escape so we've got a there's a clear breakdown in communication between the the three levelsbody's you know has has
different requirements in regards to an escape and and who is responsible ultimately responsible for making the notifications to law enf wass
Speaker 98
40:09
the pine bluff radio room notified? The
Pine bluffad room was notified
Speaker 95
40:32
and the pine bluff radio room you know it is not there position that it that it's their responsibility to notify law enforcement or or or state police but it is and it was their responsibility to issue a boO which which was attempted by the radio room but there again was there was another
failure the the highest ranking officer in the pine bluff radio room at the time generated a bolo which was sent to ACIc which should have been sent to every terminal in the state informing all law enforcement that that we've got an escape however the the Arkansas department of Corrections employee that that generated this bolo did
so incorrectly the physical description was incorrect and there was a formatting error which did not allow for the bolo to be sent out ACIC sent back to the pine bluffad room and immediate response within seconds it's an automatic response that there was a formatting error and that the bolo had not been sent and and it needed to be reformatted.
Well the the supervisor in the radio room was unaware of this failure so you know ultimately there was there was no bolo sent out by the pine bluffadio room in regards to the escape so you know there's there's several several concerns there that we've highlightedpecial aggent champagne
focused his efforts on the notification process and who was notified and when and and he can provide information in regards to that So and looking at the notification process I
Speaker 93
42:55
broke it down to three main issues and I know you guys haven't had
Speaker 118
42:59
time to thoroughly go over the report so I kind of try to summarize that the best I can you've got operational deficiencies
the structure of how everything was going that day specific to the NCU you had one hand doing something in the other hand didn't know what each other was doing so you had you had the warden on the property who to my understanding would be considered the ultimate commander he was there when when the escape happened how the investigations revealing that a captain who was also on the property was strapped down with a lot of tasks he was issuing assignments across the entire unit while visitation was
going on you know reminds you so it's busy at the unit he's trying to issue assignments he's confirming the escape reviewing video to confirm the escape he was tasked with also setting up the command center to get that rolling so that all the other supervisors get rolling in and get things handed out to everybody else he was also tasked with ensuring documentation was complete and then following up with his superiors and his subordinates so he had a lot going on at one time
this led to some breakdowns and the biggest part of the breakdowns was communication errors that day which is led to by law enforcement state police local there was two agencies notified in total that day by ADC from what we've discovered and we go back to the operational deficiencies the captain had assigned a corporal to begin making notifications these these local law enforcement agencies higher ups everybody he was
assigned to start making these notifications he was then pulled off and put into the command center once it was opened up to be a scribe Nobody else was set to fill his position to continue on making notifications and so that got dropped once they're in the command center you have a communication issue between the captain a lieutenant in there and the warden thinking that communications had already or notifications has already been made they're confused on what notifications each other is talking about and
it gets left essentially for the for the remainder another day passes before they realized that law enforcement wasn't notified they they just assumed because law enforcement started showing up that that the job had gotten done essentially law enforcement is notifying each other and that that's how it happened that's how we all got there and then like ike was talking about you've got human error Going back to the pine bluff radio room.
the pine bluff radio room was unaware of this policy. This goes into the policy structure he was talking about. there's three levels you got the secretary of level with the cabinet you got the administrative which is Mr Payne at the director level and then you've got unit level policies and they're not supposed to clash obviously one is not supposed to supersede the one higher above it and it did in every sense of this and in this notification process however I've got to say that that that was not
the issue that day. They they weren't even aware that the policies were clashing or that the NCU and the warden at the NCU was not aware that that was their policy that their policy was to have the pine bullfred room notify local law enforcement to them they found that out a day or two later and they go oh this is this is what we're supposed to be doing this is our policy they didn't know that the poundbla radio room interviewing them they were unaware of that policy as well they
they said we we don't have contacts up there we're you know we don't know who's local to them so they had no idea and so there was just this assumption that things were happening that that that were not and then then again as he talked about the bowlo the error the formatting error that was in the pine bluffre room they were responsible for issuing the bolo that would have went out to terminals to law enforcement across the state we have been instant instantly notified that there was an escape that was kind of a as you say a a
failsafe to some of these other notifications and that didn't happen because of a formatting error and then it wasn't corrected so then you had agencies like the state police locally putting out their own bolos kind of putting information together themselves and putting it out because they weren't receiving it from AdC we also identified a couple of of of other issues local residents there is no as far as we're aware automated
system to to to to notify them you've got a whistle that sounded that we don't know how far that reaches in that area it's a it's a mountainous terrain we don't know how many people can actually hear that they had to actually pick up the phone and and and call each residents in the area to notify these people that an escape had happened and obviously they they're not going to reach everybody but that's that's the system that's in place at the moment and possibly cross training issues the the captain that was
attempting to held all these responsibilities he was attempting to confirm the escape. he did not know how to operate the video system so he has to call in a lieutenant to explain to him how to operate this is these are all time time sensitive things that are that are they're wasting time so just just extra things that that compile on to notification process so once again these policy issues that we've identified we identified them later on and and we did make them aware of that but they don't seem to be essential to
the escape itself and the and the notification issues that day it it it was stemming from operational deficiencies communication breakdowns in the human error that that's where your notification breakdown happened. I appreciate that would you
say in your professional opinion that if the appropriate amount of ongoing training was occurring
that might have led to the discovery
of those policy inadequacies on the front end don't think I'm qualified
Speaker 92
49:28
to answer that question to be honest with you. I one thing Id I will say is that in speaking
Speaker 118
49:34
with Secretary Wallace the top two layers of of policy are reviewed yearly from from her cabinet level and from the administrative level and they're and they're looked at to make sure they conform with law and and they don't clash the unit policies themselves are not looked at by anybody higher up than the
warden at that unit. that's where it stops and so essentially in talking torector Payne units are allowed to have their own individualized policies as long as it doesn't clash with something that's already put put forward in the in the higher ups and those are very specific he gave me the example of if say for instance there's a a policy on towers but you have a unit that doesn't have towers well that wouldn't apply to them so
they would in that section they would specify it to that that unit that's about as far as it goes this one clearly stepped on the higher policies and it it wasn't recognized or known because it didn't go further than OK. thank you p re s ent ative beatty well I just wanna kind of follow up
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
50:45
on what you just said and and so what I heard you say was you know and I guess when we first had the
first meeting what we heard is it was more personnel that it was just a personnel problem. there were two employees that just were complacent in their job and had not discharged their duties Now sitting here listening to you what I'm hearing you say as it was personnel it was procedure and it was policy and it was overall communication and and and just knowing and performing your jobs is that is that what did I hear you correctly in in those things that it's personnel
procedures and policy were the problems there were policy issues identified
Speaker 118
51:31
I'm not the policy issues that we identified I'm I'm not certain that they were the cause of the communication breakdown that day they were identified the three main issues that we believe contributed to the communication breakdown was operational as I described with a with a with a
captain being strapped with a lot of different responsibilities and multiple things going on and maybe not a clear line of this person does this this person does this it's kind of a mix of everybody trying to handle multiple things at one time then yes the communication breakdown just and and that could fall into the human error category as well just not being not clarifying what the other person that you're speaking to what do they mean it was it was just a a communication breakdown and then yes the human error were you could have had fail safes that
failsafe wasn't there because of the human error so that would be the three main issues that
Speaker 93
52:35
I wouldu that I identified yes Senator Gilmore you and and would you mind just
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
52:45
over here yeah would you mind going through that again because heard the
question and I wasn't sure that I got a specific answer. So what were the three main things again? operational,
operational deficiencies can we talk about that really quick give us an example of operational deficiencies. so the the main thing that we identified was
Speaker 93
53:05
that the captain at the unit who was essentially the warden was at the unit as well
Speaker 118
53:15
and I mentioned that prior. However, the captain during this regular working day was essentially the one he's the shift supervisor as as I understood it kind of directing operations what's going on on the day to day you know the visitation that he's he's
he's kind of in command is the second from my understanding from the rank structure when he's there at that day so there's uncertainty of duties
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
53:40
perhaps it it could be yeah it could
Speaker 118
53:43
be confused because the amount of things he appeared to have been expected to do d don't know that it was possible had a lot of things going that he was responsible for and then I don't know past that if it got properly delegated once the task went from him to the next person if
it was properly delegated from somebody higher than him if if the chair
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
54:06
would give a little latitude here and
we'll take a second. right, so that alone, let's break that down. is that what dictates those operations to happen they have policy and escape procedures
Speaker 118
54:16
and from the understanding we have from looking at them once again Id I do not have a corrections background so this is strictly from my study of it understood the highest ranking officer at the unit at the time which would
have been the warden would be considered the ultimate commander and then it falls down from him and
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
54:41
he assigns there's policy that dictates that but the captain was
running the show captain had a lot of responsibilities well I'll take that as he was handling
Speaker 95
54:53
it and I can add to that that the internal affairs investigation conducted by the Arkansas department of Corrections found Warden Hurst to be in violation of policy by
not taking not not assuming the the role of ultimate commander on the at in the onset of of the escape at what point did he step in and and assume control or command I
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
55:19
can't answer that question I don't
Speaker 118
55:22
know that if it was actually clearly stated you had the warden in his office and the captain up there as well doing different duties and I
don't know that it was ever actually stated you're in command
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
55:44
or I'm in command ok so policy dictated one thing other
things happened . OK? What what was the third there were3, there was that
there's operations was the next one?unications communications right let's talk about that. So one
Speaker 118
55:58
of the big errors I ran through quickly with the law enforcement notifications the captain had originally
assigned a corporal to begin they call it the rebook it's basically it's a manual we got an escape they flipped to the escape section here's what you do herere's notifications you make this is what you do. let's start this this this is a checklist. so he correctly had a corporal start doing that and then unfortunately the same captain reassigned him to be a scribe once the command center was open which the captain opened and he's just essentially writing down everything that's going on in that room who's there who
shows up what's going on what was said just so later it can you can see everything that happened in that room and we we have that in the report nobody was assigned to pick up his duties and that's that's where law enforcement notifications stopped right there and it was asked about the a lieutenant showed up to the scene to the command center and asked the captain have notifications been made and he was referring to these law enforcement overall but the
law enforcement like y'all for instance for us and captain said let you know let me check. he stepped in and asked the warden have have the have the has everything everybodydy been notified the warden said yes so the captain tells the lieutenant yes that's where it ended and in interviewing the warden, the warden thought that the captain was talking about the warden's responsibilities which he assumed were his uppers. I've notified the director I've notified the assistant director I'm you know that's what the
warden assumed the captain was asking about the captain assumedwardd knows what he's talking about so there was the communication breakdown and and I presume latitude
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
57:46
Mr Chair. I presume policy dictates who's to be notified and like
when that starts oncece again there's identified clashes between three but if we're going down to
Speaker 118
57:56
the level above the units would would be administrative it would fall on that commander it would fall it would fall on the warden to assign it essentially whoever's the the highest
ranking officer there would would have been ultimately responsible for assigning that got it what was the third one human error ok well
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
58:14
that one's clear thank you Mr Representative beatty
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
58:28
I I guess my question in in your report we I I I think the information was provided to us was broken down into maybe 10 different sections maybe a maybe a little bit more than
that and exhibits any any one of those exhibits would show your interview and your discussions with the warden specifically and can you direct the committee to that section please. there are multiple
interviews what we have in front of us are summaries they they're in
Speaker 118
58:54
depth there's multiple multiple interviews thatpecial aggent McNeil did and then I did I I I can't sit here and tell you a page number I don't I don't have all it like you just referenced there's hundreds of pages complete but they are labeled
it would be such as interview of of Warden Harst interview of they are they are in their bisection and then we have a summarized version of the interview and there would also be audio to go with a lot of them. Mrchampagne did are
you familiar with the national incident Managementystem standards I'mv I'm aware of what it is I I I
Speaker 129
59:32
wouldn't not be able to go in depth with you on that
did your investigation determine what training took place in order to prepare prepare for an
incident such as this that is not
Speaker 118
59:45
the portion that I I I was specifically on notification in the communications thereof that is that's the
Speaker 96
59:53
only thing that I specifically handled I I
Speaker 95
59:56
thinkne could speak to that the investigation does contain records from the north central unit highlighting annual training regarding escapes or emergencies like fires within the unit and and things like that and so that is in the investigative file thank you
Speaker 153
1:00:15
my board is clear you got another one zimbe in your
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:00:23
electronic version of this report, your copy that you have I'm certain you have that on on on your computer or flash drive. is there a searchable index where you could you could search and readily find everywhere within this document that that there is a reference or a mention we don't have what you have . Oh I I mean I've just got a scanned in copy it's all I've
got that we got it4:2 yesterday and we've been waiting on this for a couple of months so I mean what you've got is a whole lot better than what I have are you looking for keywords is that what you're I'm looking for keywords without having to turn 900 pages to look for information that I want that since I got it at4:20 yesterday. I'm going to assume this is this assumption that they gave it to you in a pDF
Speaker 118
1:01:05
format and you you can do that on on a on a pDF you can actually go into the bar and search it wouldn't be a part of our system that's not something
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:01:16
that or 11 PDfs is my issue and my problem. So I got everything broken down into sections and I just want to search it one time and it hit everything but I I guess I'll take the time and and flip 900 pages and find what I want. we'll have another meeting and have everybody back
and we'll go through this one more time understood do you would you like
to introduce yourself and be recognized? did you have something to add my name's
Jason Aaron
Unverified
1:01:41
Jason Aaron with the Arkansas State Police lieutenant colonel over highway patrol criminal
investigation and the crimesgaint Children division thank you for being here are there any other questions
from the committee at this time? seeing none gentlemen we
appreciate your being here and your forthrightness and giving us this information I'm sure we'll be doing this again look forward to it thank you. OK committee we're gonna go back to or we're
going to go now to the review of the department of Corrections policies and
protocols regarding security. Secretary Wallace and Miss Hughes if you would join us please yes that's
fine would you say we can't hear you what did you say ma'am secretary and you better
introduce yourself for the record again Tonnyhughes chief counsel department oforrections numbers
believe what we're going to be going over is handout d one which you should have in front of you.
Speaker 12
1:02:54
Lindsey Wallace secretary for the department'm sorry I didn't hear you the first time I'm sorry dexter Payne, director for division oforrection. right thank you all
for being here do you want to give us a brief overview of what you've got here or in depth whatever your preference Well I'm gonna go as brief as y'all let me go
Speaker 32
1:03:14
since you have it in front of you so we kind of walked through this general policy
actions I tried to do some updates on the things we talked about at the last meeting and we've not yet filled the policy coordinator position but our new CIO had some really innovative ideas about utilizing AI to go through this vast catalog of policies and help me I think they found that I don't do the best job when I'm trying to work 22 hours a day to look at policies so we're going to try to use technology to help with that
and then if we can divert for just a minute and kind of talk through how policy is made at the division level the divisions of the department all kind of do it differently and at the division of correction they have a policy committee and the policy the policy coordinator for that division goes and works with subject matter experts to get things kind of ready to go. The policy committee signs off on it and then it comes up to the office of the secretary and shared Services for kind of a legal review, kind of see where it fits with everything else a
lot of times it goes back at that point because we noticed something that it doesn't fit in a format or there's a conflict with another directive so it goes back and then it has to go to the policy committee again they've traditionally met quarterly. I've asked them to meet more often than that so hopefully we can speed along policy development that way and then we kind of talked through the policies governing classification so there's two main policies governing classification that we're looking at one of them is either currently being heard
at a policy committee meeting in Pine Bluff where it has just been heard that one we made pretty small changes to that policy was not very clear about how often these policy reviews needed to be happening and it's really clear now that they need to be checking the picture to make sure it's valid every year on annual review making sure the emergency contacts are up to date and then also pushing that little recomute button so that we know that we have the most recent version and we're not depending entirely on technology to
recalculate that on its own and the other is our kind of scoring system and that scoring system we've kind of pushed pause on Secretary Wallace and we've already talked about it a little bit this meeting went to the board the board approved a comprehensive review of our classification system. we've got a couple inconsistencies in that policy but if we change those and deviate from current practice that's going to cost programming money and given how quickly the classification study is moving
we thought that probably the best course of action right now was to just make sure we're doing a really good job at implementing policy on classification in general, get the get the baseline really, really under control and then we can go and make the changes that are recommended and you know based on evidence and data so the policies governing governing notification once again there's kind of different notification policy for each unit and we are having the units look at those I will say I think maybe the last
time we hear we were here we talked about updating the secretarial directive on notifications. Secretary Wallace, myself and one of my deputies sat down and probably tried45 different ways to fix the secretarial directive on incident notification in a way that made it really clear that once we activate these emergency checklists that we are moving to those every single one of those had unintended consequences and we were really worried about notifications not going out and kind of being in the same
situation again. So she can tell me if I've a misstating this, OK effectively what we decided was we would rather notify people twice than notify them not at all so we're going to leave the secretarial directive as it is and leave that internal affairs or internal affairs administrator notification in place is kind of a failsafe so that we can make sure that law enforcement's being notified at that level at the very least so that's kind of my big
picture and I'll take any questions thank you for that is is
a is the department division in compliance with the national incident Manage systems standards
Yesir. all of our staff have to take we start out at
Speaker 17
1:07:54
the training academy we teach theieims 100 there then ranking staff take the300400 series as well as7800 I've I've taken 1,3,4,7 and 8 for sure I think more than that but I know I've taken those because it just it's it strikes me when you have those whether obviously we
have the policy issues right I
think we all recognize that that's not something that happened overnight that's something that's taken years to get there right?
but when you have employees who are in a stressful situation you know us that's where you rely on training to keep people focused to keep people on task to make sure that they're performing not only their duties but usually they need to know the duties of the people next to them right so that so that there's oversight there's double as you just said we're doing it twice right so that's what strikes me throughout all of this is that
folks didn't know what they didn't know and usually that comes down to training so I don't know if you have any way to explain that but it doesn't seem like we're training folks the way they need to be trained. Yes
Speaker 17
1:09:11
sir and training is something that we definitely need to do more of
Speaker 173
1:09:15
and I I assure you we will be doing more training concerning the the neums Representative Col
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:09:26
thank you Mr Chair. So I think that in the
previous state police folks were talking about it came down to calling people in the area just making calls as best they could obviouslybously a lot of people don't have landlines probably impossible to reach a lot of these people. I know that's not really the notification you're talking about here. how is it that that is the best we've got and I'm sure that there are ways to do that better do you know are there other
jurisdictions maybe elsewhere in the country that have a better system for notifying people in the area about something like
Speaker 17
1:10:03
this yes sir we had a fairly good system I think up until about March of this year we had an alert express system that notified people if you know for an incidental such as this and that that went away in March. so now we're working on a secret if I'm correct we're working with state police on a notification system now to basically notify everyone it hits
everybody's cellphone that we've had an issue at the facility similar to like an amber alert a silver
Speaker 177
1:10:31
alert something like that we're working with state police to develop that kind of alert to take the place of what Mr Payne's talking about with the alert exxpress. OK well that's good because that sounds much better. why
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:10:41
did the other one go away? you said it went away in March. don't know I don't remember the answer
Speaker 181
1:10:47
it wasn't a viru it wasn't a vir was it the contract No I don't think it
Speaker 173
1:10:52
was a contract. I think the the company it
Speaker 12
1:11:01
my deputy chief of staff is trying to tell me something from the
Speaker 183
1:11:06
audience if y'all don't mind him to come up yeah he's saying it went away the due to the technology of the system was that was outdatedd technology
Speaker 12
1:11:13
OK well do you have any sense of when the
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:11:18
new system will be back up and running so we have something better in place for people. Can we get some latitude for the deputy
Speaker 31
1:11:26
chief of staff to take my chair for a moment that's fine oh never mind I didn't realize
Speaker 11
1:11:32
there was an empty seats please introduce yourself for the record. good afternoon nicolas Stuart
Speaker 191
1:11:43
deputy chief of staff we have a meeting with Major Stacy hose next week to discuss the system that Secretary Wallace is talking about that will act like silver and amber alerts so when that system away we didn't know it was going away or we knew it was going away and
we didn't plan for it to go away. I think in talking to director
Speaker 191
1:12:04
Pane from my memory we did not know it's a thirdparty vendor that ACIC utilizes and we have a different partnership with with something else and we were not we were not informed that the system was going away said all of us a phone call one day that says it's ending
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:12:22
so we don't quite know I guess when the new system will be up. you'll know more after the meeting and yes yes sir Representative Rye
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:12:36
Thank you thank you Mr Chairman. M and this may have been covered before but were there weapons used by the inmates when the when this breakout was made no sir there were no weapons utilized.n't anything there you know a couple of years ago this did come up and we felt like that we hadn needed a better accounting system for our for our weapons inside each each facility
and I think it's something we probably still need to look at yes sir thank you thank you Mr Chairman. Representative beatty I just want to
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:13:20
go back and I'm still kind of hung up on the disciplinary action and and maybe the first comments that were made on this hardden escape this may not be the the right time to go through it but you're sitting back at the table so it's a good time for me to ask the question Last time I I think when when
you first spoke about this and I'm I'm specifically speaking to dexter Payne you said it was just a failure on two employees and you stood by that and now after hearing from the state police after your own comments about the other disciplinary actions that had to take place would you like to make a statement on exactly what happened that led to this and
was it just two employees or was it systemic failure throughout the system and failure to follow policies and directives and lack of communication and leadership at DOc. I stand on those two
Speaker 17
1:14:22
employees were the the main characters for this escape we did find that we have had policy issues once we determine you know at the during the escape we found that but but to push a button
and let to an inmate outside or let an unknown person outside of the gate is a is a a human error s stand on that you you know better that's that's pretty much common sense
Speaker 37
1:14:51
that you don't let somebody out the gate that you don't know we're security specifically
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:14:58
dealing with the the kitchen staff, and
the terminated employees. I understand the guard and the guard tower just like you said made a mistake
and and wasn't thinking and pushed a button and just let let the guy walk out kitchen staff there seems to be some confusion on whether or not there was a a written directive. I I looked at the documentation that was sent to me about the meeting and I mean maybe I failed to see in that meeting where there was anything that said you know, I saw where the door should be locked but I I mean to me that wasn't clear. I didn't sit in the meeting. I wasn't there. but
there were three other employees there and so still on that employee that was fired from the from the kitchen. you still stand firm that that was fair and and and prudent action on that one employee. on that one employee but we took action on on all of most of the kitchen staff but
Speaker 17
1:15:57
that was after the fact yes sir it was after the fact there
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:16:03
ain't been any disciplinary action on the warden at this time we haven't taken
Speaker 17
1:16:07
any disciplinary action on the ward and and I do understand
the the state police report seeing some confusion about the national incident Man system but it's just like today I'm the director for the division of correction and I'm sitting here with you. That doesn't mean I'm not in charge of deltaermont it means that I'm the incident commander
Speaker 37
1:16:28
and the warden was there that day but that Neals that ims also tells you about command
Speaker 17
1:16:35
staff it also tells you about finance public information it tells you about different areas that other people cover
even though you're the incident commander and that captain was serving as command staff that day he wasn't the incident commander the warden was and he was command staff and he did set those give directions on staff as to what they were supposed to do and and and I understand it was confusion between him and the warden because they each other thought that they should have done something different as far as notifications but the warden was the incident commander that day and that captain was command staff that day and that's what
the ims tells us to do so your short answer is no no I have not taken corrective action on the board. Are are you going to? possibly
Speaker 153
1:17:27
I mean I'll I'll further look at this good enough thank you yes sir so it sounds like everyone was confused
out there that day though and that comes down to the leadership of the warden that comes down to the leadership of the captain righthether or not the captain agreed with the warden's decisions or not chain of command he's supposed to follow those directives right and delegate appropriately so that
again comes down to policy and training. yes sir that's so this is not just about two employees this is a failure systemically because we didn't have the training because we didn't have the policies worked out what I was referring
Speaker 37
1:17:58
to the two employees that actually did the actions to allow this inmate outside the fence that does
not happen without proper training and proper policy. yes sir Senator Gilmore
you recognized thank you thank y'all for being here. So I'm will start with yourector
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:18:16
Payne. I know you're excited, aren't you sir so you you heard my questions to the investigators. So I'm going to give you a chance and succinctly briefly all of that what do you
disagree with in the report from the state police? I think they did
Speaker 201
1:18:36
a pretty accurate report but as far as
Speaker 37
1:18:39
the the portion where the kitchen supervisors weren't told they're there's a ify situation there
where they're told that you know that door cannot not be unlocked without a supervisor present. well if you don't if a supervisor's not there and they don't unlock the door the inmate's not out so I know it doesn't just specifically say don't let an inmate on the back doc. I know it doesn't say that but it's telling him without a supervisor present don't unlock that door so that's that's the only thing that comes to mind on
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:19:07
their report? Well we we've definitely got some policy issues we got to work
Speaker 20
1:19:11
through so you agree you agree with that part of the report ok great anything else
Speaker 206
1:19:20
no sir no other issues OK Misss Wallace thank
Speaker 41
1:19:26
you senator. I mean I I tend to agree with whatrector Payne said. I think they did a
Speaker 42
1:19:31
really good thorough investigation talking to a lot of folks I think it was a factual sort of takeaway of everything and and you know they said a lot just kind of what Mrchampagne said up here. I'm I'm not a corrections official so I don't feel like I'm, you know, able to weigh in on some of the stuff. I think Mr. Payne's right
we've got some policy cleanup that we need to work on Misss yell talked about some of those and just looking at things from a big picture perspective Mr Payne's already talked about the units and how they also need to be reviewing their policies and then the communications break down. I mean I think on a daily basis we talk about how we could communicate better amongst each other and I think that goes for the whole department. So I mean I do think that they did a very thorough job with their their review
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:20:21
so it sounds like to me it goes beyond two
Speaker 42
1:20:28
people. there were definitely breakdowns I think in a in a lot of it. I think there were some lax behaviors on lots of staff but I thinkrector Payne's addressed a lot of those already with or at least the unit has with their disciplinnaries and I think we'll still probably be digesting this we haven't really had I mean it's apresentative beatty mentioned it it's a very long report. I think we'll we'll have lots of time to sort of dissect and digest lots of things and see if
there are more actions that we need to take well I think everybody has
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:20:55
to digest considering we just got it so there's there's that look from our perspective what's
predictable is preventable, right? We don't want this to happen again you don't want this to happen again, right? I mean I think we can all agree on that and the only way we keep this from happening again is we make sure we have policies in place we have failsafes in place yes we can blame you know the person who pushed the button at the end of
the day. but what about all the things and I know I'm sounding like a broken recordrector Payne from last time you were sitting there but we we can have the person sitting there and doesn't push the button but what about all the things leading up to it ? what about all the other measures that led up to that? What about all the other things that are governed by policy that led up to that. So I appreciate this the the viewpoint from y'all of you know at the end of the day you want to mitigate the issue with addressing the two employees but I just want to
make sure that we're doing all the other things to keep this from happening again. that's all that that's our only motive here because at the end of the day this ended pretty well considering could have ended really poorly, right? I mean we this could have ended with loss of life it could have end God knows what, perish the thought. but you know at the end of the day it ended pretty well considering and I think God blessed us in that. So please understand our motive and our motive is let's don't do this again.
Speaker 210
1:22:24
thank you Representative Collins yeah just to add on to
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:22:32
that I mean I I feel like I hear you guys acknowledging over and over again that it is more than just two people. I mean you you're going to improve the training and you acknowledge that the report is accurate and you're gonna work on some policy issues so all of that you continually seem to be saying without saying it there's more than just two people those two people may have precipitated it in the immediate kind of one thing led to another
way but there's a lot more that's going on that needs to be addressed amm I getting that right? Yes sir that's correct. I
Speaker 77
1:23:04
think more needs to be addressed and when I said it to people that I was talking about
Speaker 17
1:23:10
particularly the escape the other things with the command center that's that's basically a recovery issue we were trying to recapture the inmate and we found that we had some communication issues and breakdowns my my my approach
Speaker 37
1:23:20
to the two people is solely for how he got out that fence but
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:23:26
there were things that could have been done that would have prevented that from happening even with those two people's involvement that would have prevented them maybe from having led to that with their actions if you had had some additional you know, measures in place that you guys I think have acknowledged needs to be done need to need to be taken sir we've taken some additional measures I mean we've
Speaker 17
1:23:47
done things like take an electronic lock off of one of the gates to make sure somebody has to go and retrieve a key to to open that gate so we've we've done
Speaker 178
1:23:57
some things of that nature to make sure we don't we don't we hope to not to have this mistake happen again OK well I just
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:24:04
you know, I hear Representative beatty and I hear Senator Gilmore asking this question over and over and I I feel the same way they do it's like and then I hear you guys coming so close to acknowledging and and agreeing with them but somehow stopping short so I'm glad to hear that it sounds like you actually are are acknowledging and agreeing with them without putting words in your mouth sir thanks senator deeses thank you Mr
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:24:28
chairir. do you do mock training live trainings for these critical incidences? yes sir we do quarterly training and then and we have a large
Speaker 17
1:24:40
scale drill annually for each facility. wonderful and then reporting structure wise does the warn report to you warden reports
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:24:46
to one of the deputy directors who is that I'm sorry currently the deputy
Speaker 219
1:24:51
director for that unit is we don't have
Speaker 178
1:24:59
one but at that time it was William Strong. and why is is
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:25:04
that person not here anymore is that related to this escape or is it unrelated? no sir. we
Speaker 178
1:25:10
we had a person retire we just haven't had a we we can't feel the position so so
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:25:17
that's been empty for a while so from an after action review the the the direct supervisor over the warden has been empty for a while. who who has been in communication with that warden
about training and about fixing the problems I have someone
Speaker 17
1:25:34
filling in that role right now and I'm I'm taking on some extra duties to to to make sure we do that and
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:25:42
and it was made aware to me that
this individual had been let go this this warden and had been brought back and so that that's concerning and then we also have this incident happened under his watch are we confident this is the
right person to be in charge of of that command of that unit? yes sir I'm
Speaker 17
1:26:09
confident he was let go previously about 12131el or 13 years ago for a different incident and he was allowed to come back I think because when he was terminated I think the director that allowed him to come back felt that he wasn't necessarily the the reason
Speaker 197
1:26:24
for the incident that happened that caused this termination previously.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:26:32
so the entire leadership structure at North Central unit in your opinion is being adequately trained and has the the backgrounds needed for future leadership in that role. Yes sir and and it's it all we we provide the training it's it's your
Speaker 17
1:26:49
comprehension of the the training and we think we do provide training but what we're sure gonna make sure that they get additional training to make sure that they can
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:27:03
adequately do their job andres ok all right thank you Senator
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:27:13
Gilmore thank you just to pick up where Senator dees's stop so
12 years ago who who was the director then it wasn't you right? sir it wasRay HobbsRay Hobbs ok OK. that and and how how
did he come back he was allowed to come back by
Speaker 178
1:27:33
former director Wendy Kelly. OK. and remind me of the
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:27:37
circumstances of his previous termination there was a sexual harassment complaint that wasn't handled
Speaker 173
1:27:45
correctly at the facility and several staff and was he cleared of all of that to be allowed to come back?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:27:55
understand but I mean you're you're who's sitting here and I
mean you've been in the department maybe not in that
Speaker 77
1:28:09
role so yes sir he he was cleared to come back.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:28:14
OK. OK. and you weren't there secretary. you were at a different agency I presume.
Yeah. OK. can we talk about the kitchen staff for a second. so that person was fired, terminated, right? during this ordeal or after this situation.
do you think that was the right decision? sir ok can you elaborate
Speaker 173
1:28:43
? I think once this person had been told that he he could not allow or allow inmates on the back dock alone
Speaker 178
1:28:50
and he did it anyway I think he failed to be obey his orders ok who oversees
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:28:56
him or her or that person the deputy ward so what about the deputy warden
Speaker 17
1:29:05
the deputy warden is the one that basically gave the instructions to not do it but who oversees the day to day
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:12
and knows when he's if he's following the policy or procedures the food production manager that we we call him en captain ok so was
Speaker 178
1:29:18
that person doing their job? no sir ok well then why
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:20
not them they're terminated that one too so how many have been terminated at this point?3 at this point ok
so who does that person report to? that that person reports to the
Speaker 219
1:29:40
deputy ward. OK. well there we are back
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:42
again. I mean you see my point like at some point when it's just when you start just terminating people, maybe they do deserve to be not saying that they don't necessarily but do you just stop there? I mean at some point there are failures beyond just human error and those failures are the system the failures are the are the failsafes of the system to make sure that there's oversight and
to make sure that people are doing their job. And again, not trying to beat the the the horse here but like the point my'm making is you can keep going up the food chain right but if that deputy warden was
Speaker 17
1:30:19
the one that originally saw them breaking policy and instructed them that that was the purpose of that meeting and they had to sign if he was the one that caught them and told them not to do it again 100% where's his fault
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:30:36
well who who's to make sure that they follow his rules or his, his orders him and the kitchen captain so my point is we can keep going in circles on this, right? but if we if we don't have the proper policies and the procedures to make sure that the orders are followed and we don't have the proper oversight to make sure the orders are followed then we can keep playing the circular reasoning game of who's to blame and that's the point that's the point we're making if we have the policies and procedures in place that we don't have to play
the game you follow yes sir thank you My board is
cleared. Any other questions? Representative Beatty just just one question kind of
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:31:21
to follow back up and also since this his own actual the review of DOC policies and protocols regarding security a few years back there was reference to a a study that this I I think maybe a grant money where where we
spent453,000 dollars for a study to study and assess the program culture and climate in Arkansas and prison culture and climate in Arkansas and and mainly go over operational issues within Department of Corrections and Community Corrections supposed to be a four year study conducted by Doctor Mary Parker, DoctorRobert yel and Doctor Molly Smith and and that was supposed to be completed maybe april of of this year.
just wondering if if if that's been completed? do y'all have a copy of that it's something that is shareable with
Speaker 177
1:32:18
this committee. It is partially completedpresentative beatty so Drar
Speaker 42
1:32:21
Doctor Parker started on the incarcerated side of the house division of correction so we have a preliminary report covering that that we can absolutely share with y'all the division of community correction so the probation and parole side of the house and those community correction centers that now coincidentally I think are under director
painne that piece of it is still ongoing. She hasn't quite wrapped up that report yet but we can absolutely share the other one with you and of all those grant monies has
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:32:51
been expended or is there still some holdback on that for completion of this report that was I I think it went through the study went through April of 25 and we don't know the answer to that. I do believe my
Speaker 42
1:33:03
procur while she was here my procurement administrator was here but I think we asked for an extension on the contract from you guys so
that she could finish out the study. I don't think we added any additional funding to it but that's what my recollection is but if you'll let me double check that I will get back to you that'd be
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:33:22
great and if we can we can get you back on that you can you can double check and and and come back to us on that but probably at a at a later meeting it would be nice to see that report and let this committee review that report and see if you know maybe some of these are issues that they identified within their study so we look forward to seeing that report mainly to make
certain that we knew something about if we spent453,000 dollars on it. thank you. And that brought another question to my mind .
the department has not filled the pos policy coordinator position at this time I
can't remember if you addressed that at
the beginning of your remarks. Are there roadblocks in the way is there a reason we're not filling that position? so we've talked about the position the
Speaker 42
1:34:07
board of corrections and I talked about it. I trying to remember maybe two meetings ago and and kind of
what we wanted what the board wanted to do and kind of where we are. I think Missale sort of alluded to that we're trying to speed up the frequency with which the policy committee meets so we can get a better handle on the existing process right now but at this time no the board and and and well I guess myself we aren in at the point where we're trying to work the process as it exists right now before we add another position to the department thank you all for being here we appreciate you
all right committee now we'll give the board of corrections a chance to visit with us. Mrelllettt, Misterhodges, if you'd introduce yourself for the record
Speaker 231
1:35:16
your sun Brannon To I'm a member of the subrections Doctor Byeers
sorry do that again Mr Tollett sorry. I'm Brandon Tollett and I'm a
Speaker 234
1:35:26
member of the Arkansas Bo I'm Debs byers a member of the board
Speaker 235
1:35:32
of corrections. Granthodges member of the board of correctionss thank you gentlemen for being here I don't know if
you all want to start out with statements or anything like that or if you just want to open opened up for
if any of you if you have anything you want
Speaker 234
1:35:53
to say now's the time. I will like to to say that this is the first time that we've had the opportunity to really look at just like all of you the state police investigation so it is going to take me quite a bit of time to go through 900 pages of documents thorough I don't think is a word that correctly describes the investigation OK, we'll move to members
Senator Gilmore I think extremely thorough and lengthy would be accurate
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:36:18
describe that Mr. chairir I I'd like to following up on the question you just asked the last group. I'd like to hear from the board, basically their thoughts on that question and and if I make sure I accurately get your your question is there any sort of roadblock or hold up on the policy position within corrections en ator you're morere not that I know of we not that I
Speaker 235
1:36:49
know of we I would point out that there are a mechanisms in place for the development of policy I mean it's not like we don't we don't have a a policy development procedure right now we have a policy development on the community correction side as well as on the department of correctionss division of correction and on the community correction side as well as there are individuals in the
in the secretary's office that are assigned to policy development I guess probably that that may be part of the reason is because right now there have been individuals who have been covering that but as far as there being a roadblock umm I'm not I'm not familiar with one
Speaker 239
1:37:35
too to any of the three of y'all have you filled that position then? no sir we haven't filled
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:37:41
the position or the department of corrections as a we can't fill a
position while presume y'all ok it right? I mean you would approve it we do
Speaker 241
1:37:57
we we do give the OK on those. and and to follow up with what Do. Byeers mentioned. there were some other positions that were needing field that we've been trying to get filled as well and so that took priority specifically one is an attorney position that falls under umrector Payne that we've struggled getting fielded and so we wanted him to be able to have an attorney position because he needs that legal direction especially when we look at having an escape beforehand
and so we didn't want that to take a back burner before filling the policy position and and what other positions then have
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:29
taken priority over this one? I don't think that there are any others that that
Speaker 241
1:38:33
that's the only one that I recall. OK so how long have
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:37
we've been looking at this position? for quite a while are you talking about the
Speaker 241
1:38:47
the policy coordinator position it was brought to the board's attention I believe two meetings ago and that's and that's the last time that the board has actually spoken about the
position but it was it was two meetings ago. I don't have the date off the top of my head that that you
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:39:00
recollect that recall Mrhodges you're the only one that hadn't spoken.
do you care to jump in there? I agree with whatever everything Mr. Tala has
Speaker 247
1:39:11
said. I think we're all eager to fill that position and continue to work on these policies. you foresee that getting filled soon? I certainly hope so
OK gentlemen, I'm done with the question so it it it was mentioned that we you know have committees that do policy and all these other things but it's obvious that that is not working right now do the do those folks is that their only job to look at policy or do they have other duties that might take them away from making sure the policies align and conform not only with state law but with even inter interdepartmental Somebody behind me may be able
Speaker 241
1:39:56
to correct me on this but I believe that the department of Corrections the department of Community Corrections both have a policy coordinator position that is that is their dedicated positions and then we have a person that works in shared services under the legal division that also deals with policies along with other things but I believe
Speaker 231
1:40:15
there are two positions that that work on those specifically Senator Gilmore thank you so we have positions
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:40:22
one in corrections one in community corrections.
correct correct that has been the way the system has worked and so I think the point would be to have a single person to look broadly over all of it I mean do you not think that's a good idea? I mean I'm I'm asking there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer here that I'm looking for. I'm I mean I'm just trying to figure out why this hasn't been done. I understand what you're saying senator you're saying because of when we look at the
Speaker 241
1:40:57
communication policies that we we just spent you know ir0 minutes talking about or so there were differences in between the unit policies versus the inconsistencies right that that just don't help any crisis. that is correct and and I will say that I do think some sort of centralized position can't help alleviate some of that and I'm not and I'm not trying to say that the position is not valuable or anything like that but there have been long the specifically
the attorney position is a long standing position that we've been trying to get filled for the department oforrections to be able to help not just with the with an escape but any kind of you know legal situation that comes up and so I don't think the board has an issue filling a coordinator position I don't think that's it I think the the issues we we have positions that we're that are that have been
Speaker 234
1:41:47
a priority for a long period of time that we're trying to get fielded as well so in that attorney position is the one you're speaking
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:41:53
of that you've been trying to fill that that's the one that can recall. OK and
and so is does that position exists currently or is that a new position? that position exists currently the legal the legal position the position as currently OKok and it it exists outside of legal department or the legal because you have legal staff correct? Sharedervices has
legal staff there was a position within the
Speaker 241
1:42:19
department of Corrections and I can't tell you the title of it off the top of
Speaker 234
1:42:24
my head I just know it's an attorney position that directly advises derector Payne. OK so
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:42:31
but shared services legal can't offer legal advice torector Payne. they can I think they have
Speaker 241
1:42:40
been I think it's a little disjointed in the in the way that it is because Dexter needs somebody or director paint I apologize needs somebody that he can he can call or go meet with at his office which I believe is located in Pine Bluff whereas our shared services legal departments located in LittleRock. OK
so you said that did I hear you correctly that the department and the division have folks that work on policy yes we should get those two together. I agree 100% OK because obviously that's a major issue so they haven't gotten together yet?
Speaker 241
1:43:26
No they have they have in fact when when the coordinator position the discussion came up during the board meeting we informed all of those individuals that they need to be meeting on a
very consistent basis. what we've discovered is that there was an an extensive backlog log of policies that were that were moving through the divisions up to shared services but it didn't seem like they were coming back with approvals because legal was making changes to them and there was an issue so we as a board recommended that they
Speaker 234
1:43:52
meet more frequently and they meet in person so that we can get those addressed. any other questions Anything further no I do want to I would like
Speaker 241
1:44:08
to say I I do share the sentiment of this committee about the training I will tell you from my personal experience and from the education that I have that we and public service need to spend a large portion of our of our training on low ffrequency but highris events because when they occur we don't have always have the opportunity to go back and read every policy manual that exists especially when there's different ones scattered out across the department or division and so I I think that's
a focus that I'm taking personally on the board to really sit down and figure out how we can make training better and more effective for our staff so that one we can prevent these things from happening in the future because I promise you I don't want to sit here any longer because of an escape and I know that you guys don't want to have to do that as well and the state doesn't deserve to have to do that and so figure out how we can prevent it and then figure out how we can address those other issues very good well thank you gentlemen for being here members if there's no other business we
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Discussion of Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC) Critical Incident Report Involving Prisoner Escape from Calico Rock [Exhibit B]
C. Presentation of Arkansas State Police (ASP) Investigation Related to Prisoner Escape from Calico Rock [Exhibits C1-C10]
D. Review of DOC Policies and Protocols Regarding Security
E. Discussion of Arkansas Board of Corrections (BOC) Policies and Protocols Regarding Security
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
Speakers
Speaker 3
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
Senator Matt McKee Chair
Unverified
Speaker 7
Speaker 12
Speaker 17
Speaker 20
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
Speaker 32
Speaker 40
Speaker 42
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 35
Speaker 65
Speaker 70
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Speaker 77
Speaker 91
Speaker 93
Speaker 95
Speaker 96
Speaker 98
Speaker 118
Speaker 92
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 129
Speaker 153
Jason Aaron
Unverified
Speaker 173
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 177
Speaker 181
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Speaker 31
Speaker 11
Speaker 191
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 37
Speaker 201
Speaker 206
Speaker 41
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Speaker 178
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Speaker 197
Speaker 231
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Speaker 241
Speaker 247