ALC-Charitable, Penal, and Correctional Institutions
Video
Transcript
13 documents
Machine transcript
May contain errors. Verify important quotations against the official video.
About transcript accuracy
- Source
- Whisper
- Model
- ggml-large-v3-turbo.bin
- Processing date
- October 6, 2026
If you'd all rise with me, Senator
Speaker 3
0:08
Dease is going to lead us in prayer. Senator Flippo, zip it. All right, let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for today. Thank you for
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
0:16
the opportunity to gather today and do the work of the people. Well, we ask for 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 serve you and honor you 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 hopefully make wise decisions. I thank you for this time to meet together. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you,
Senator Dees. Okay, 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 a Prisoner Escape from Calico Rock. We appreciate your attendance today. If you'd introduce yourself for the record, you are recognized.
Speaker 7
1:35
Well, I sat down fastest, so I'll start. Tawny Hughes, Chief Legal Counsel, Department of Corrections. Dexter Payne, Director for
Speaker 12
1:45
Division of Corrections. Lindsay Wallace, Secretary for the Department of Corrections. I apologize in advance. You recognize.
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,
Speaker 17
2:06
and then we'll let members ask questions as they occur. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman. Dexter Payne, Director for Divisional Correction. We want to go over the critical incident report for the north central escape. I'll go ahead and basically read our summary. On May 25th, 2025, at approximately 2.53 p.m., Inmate Grant Harden is assigned as a 1C kitchen worker escape from the north central unit
by walking through the Sally Port gates dressed in a homemade uniform design 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., Inmate 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.
Directives clearly communicated to kitchen staff and acknowledged in writing on May 14, 2025. Inmate Harding remained unsupervised for approximately one hour and eight minutes, which gave him ample opportunity to change into the disguise he used to facilitate his escape. Around 3.08 p.m., the food service supervisor noticed Harding was not on the back dock area and began to search to locate him by telephoning the Laundry and West Tower staff. After being unable to locate inmate Harding, 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 Hardin walking through 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 approximately 3.40 p.m., the unit was placed on lockdown.
Emergency escape procedures were activated and the command center was established. A roster count was conducted at 3.47 p.m., confirming inmate Harden's absence. All other inmates were accounted for by 4.48 p.m. 17 internal and perimeter checkpoints were activated and the unit's K-19 began searching the facility grounds. The box seen on the surveillance footage was located behind the ICC garage, and a homemade ladder was found nearby. A facility-wide 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-backed dock area without direct staff supervision. The on-duty supervising staff member disregarded this policy, allowing inmate-hardened access to a sensitive area, despite having acknowledged this violated a previous directive. Camera footage and follow-up interviews confirmed this failure. Additionally, the West Tower officer admitted to observing an individual on the back dock dressed similarly to a staff member.
But leaving the person to be an employee, the officer allowed the individual later identified as hardened to pass through both sally port gates without verifying identity or issuing a challenge. From May 25th through June the 6th, the facility remained locked down. The command post remained operational throughout the duration of the search. The command post coordinated ground and aerial searches, gathered intelligence, and worked with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners.
Local residents were also notified of the escape through phone alerts in coordination with local authorities to ensure public safety and awareness. On June 6th at approximately 3.45 p.m., M.A. Harden was located by the U.S. Border Patrol approximately 1.5 miles northwest of the north central unit in a densely wooded area. His identity was confirmed using a portable fingerprint scanner provided by the Arkansas State Police. After a medical evaluation, Immate Hardin 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. Immate Harden's unsupervised time on the back dock allowed him to don the disguise and prepare for the escape. A secondary failure occurred when the Sally Port West Tower procedures were not followed and identity verification was not performed.
Unfortunately, this allowed Immate Harden to exit the facility unchallenged. And what we found from the critical incident review, we've had to discipline multiple staff members for also failure to adhere to policy. including terminating one other
Speaker 20
7:19
and suspending several okay 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 you
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
7:57
director pain i appreciate the the information so this my question about uh the escape policy update can i cover that piece right now just a question on that yes sir okay so on there on uh 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
Speaker 32
8:19
bullet three on there representative I actually took I'm actually the one who 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 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 and 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 and his classification administrator expressed to me was when you look on the critical
incident review, you see that inmate Hardin had not had his classification refreshed in quite some time. It had been several years, right? The classification administrator who works at central office, 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 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 your performance evaluation period or when something 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. Okay great. Director Payne
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
10:12
so I 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 whatever I think is how you kind of explain that 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 inside
Speaker 17
11:17
of our yoma system we do mark any any training or any prior jobs that they do have uh that's added in there we ask the inmates you know but it's basically um inmate driven you know
whatever answers he gives if he if he says he's been in the military 40 years i mean we don't have a a necessary way to argue it unless we get his dd 214 sure so we do uh talk to them and interview them and get those answers uh from the
Speaker 40
11:41
inmate you know and it may not necessarily always be true and i think secretary wallace has something to add yes
Speaker 42
11:47
sir i just wanted to add 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 kind of alerts staff to look for certain things whenever you're looking at the offenders kind of analyzing them as they're going through the process and we've started looking at that i think more significantly a little bit
Chair
Unverified
12:16
more okay great thank you thank you
mr. chairman senator Dees you're recognized thank
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
12:24
you mr. chair and thank 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 verse 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 um of the point system can I get a little clarification on is is that a subjective um error that you know I see one of the bullet points um he should have he was given 10 points
when he should have been given 15 um some prior offenses where he should have had 20 was was not um accounted are those typing errors are they subjection errors what help me understand the error of that entrance senator so what we
Speaker 7
13:20
have is a system that does its absolute best to automate as much of this as possible
Speaker 32
13:25
um but there are unique situations um the 10 points when it should have been 15 points i've spent a fair amount of time clicking around in eomis trying to replicate
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. 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 state history. So 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 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 and 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
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
15:21
makes sense with automation 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 absolutely and then 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 51 to 71 I think I'm reading that correctly how confident are we am I reading that right and offenders with a score 51 71 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 miss classification there
Speaker 17
16:13
yes I'm pretty confident our classification
administrator and one of our staff have went through all the inmates there and we're working throughout the system to make sure everybody's, uh, correct, correctly classified classified, but Hey, with almost 18,000 inmates is going to take us a little bit of time, but we were sure North central should be classified correctly at this time. Okay. Thank
you. Yes. You mentioned, uh, I believe a classification committee of some kind. Did I hear
Speaker 35
16:44
correctly? Well, I talked about a classification committee and probably a classification
study are those are those things that existed already or have existed or are they something
Speaker 32
16:55
that we would like to see classification committees have existed as long as i know they take into account a lot of different factors it's not just going to be your kind
of static factors that you come into the unit with or do they help with the the design of the automated system and how the inputs are recorded or
Speaker 32
17:13
and just and judged um well so we have a private contractor doing that um just because they have a lot more academic base um 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 secretary wallace felt pretty strongly i hope i'm not speaking for her um 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
so that's kind of an audit of the existing system yes it's two parts it's going to be are we doing it correctly and just based on what our scoring system is and and then also is
our scoring system right there's kind of two parts to that okay 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
Speaker 63
18:18
classification system yes they meet weekly and that they had met
weekly and this was just missed it does seem that way yes okay thank you senator johnson
Speaker 65
18:30
thank you guys for coming after you made the report so i'm going off on memory somewhat but I'm going to tag on to what Representative 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've got a person in that situation, would it not be good policy to move him to a different job where he has not been there as long as the supervisor? Because 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 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 units with those people or move them to a different job. Am I wrong in that? I think that's
Speaker 17
19:50
a pretty good observation. I mean, that's something we definitely consider, but it may not happen with all of the inmates that we have. We may not move them in a two-year period or a five-year period, but it is something that we can consider,
Speaker 70
20:05
and this classification study may help us with it.
Speaker 42
20:10
If I can just add, I completely agree with Director Payne, but I think also what the critical incident review will show, and Harden 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, 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
Speaker 65
20:48
to. Well, if you've got somebody with that background. Yes, sir. They're going to take advantage of every situation, and we just got to have the policy to be able to have the best controls we can, and I appreciate y'all. Yes, sir.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
21:08
Representative Beatty. Well, I just had a question that came in from a committee member who can't be here today, and let's see if I can get this out here. I guess something that was said in your report is that there was a memo or a directive about unsupervised inmates on the loading dock and on the dock. But I guess in the article in the DEMGAS, 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.
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
22:05
All right. Thank you. Representative Dennis Orenko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. One last question. I 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. You all made the mention that the inmate would have to kind of give you information if they were military with a DD-214. Are there quite a few
inmates right now in the system that are prior police officers? Yes, sir.
Speaker 77
22:37
We have several that are prior police officers as well as prior
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
22:42
military. Okay, and are they identified then in some sort of self-identification
because they would be, I'm going to assume, that they have access to CLEST while they're a police officer where they can go in as much as they want and in the training episodes they can take as much of that training as they want and, in fact, they have required training. And then if they're military, they'll tell them what they have for training. Is that something that's identified to where this could be identified in the future where we're going to make sure we're going to avoid someone who has possibility of additional training to be able to exploit anything out there yes sir and
Speaker 17
23:20
most of our law enforcement officers are in protective custody at one of our facilities so we definitely know who they are military is a little different different because you have so many and like i said it's a self-report on the military but once we do know who they are yes sir We have veteran barracks and things of that nature at a couple of our facilities. Okay. And I think when you say self-report,
Speaker 40
23:40
I believe if we pull up the military record, there's
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
23:46
an open source information on something. And, I mean, if it says, I can tell you right now, if it says C or C or C or A, B, you know, you may want to put a star by them.
Speaker 32
23:57
So, thank you. Representative, 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 Okay, 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. If you
guys will come down and introduce yourself for the record. We'll recognize you.
Speaker 91
25:00
I know. my name is drake champagne i'm an agent
Speaker 93
25:08
with the special investigations unit of the arkansas state police drake champagne yes mike mcneil arkansas
Speaker 95
25:17
state police special investigations unit thank you gentlemen both for being here i'm just going
to 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
Speaker 95
25:30
and then we'll open it up for questions. All right. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members. As we all know, inmate Grant Hardin escaped from the Arkansas Department of Corrections on May 25, 2025. As a result of that, the Arkansas State Police was directed to conduct an administrative investigation into the escape. We focused in three main areas regarding that administrative investigation.
One, the circumstances and manner of inmate Hardin's escape. Two, 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 answer those questions as best as we can. If you'd like for me to just go into some information in our summary, I can do that as well.
Okay, members. I think that we were provided the file yesterday, or staff was provided the file yesterday, around 420 it's a 900 page 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 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
28:04
I don't know that there's gonna be a lot of questions okay well 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 that's in the in the file that that you guys have Um, so over the course of, you know, over a year, almost two years, inmate Harden by policy was allowed to access the back dock, uh, and remain out there for, uh, periods of time up to 30 minutes to over an hour, uh, with no supervision.
Now, information provided by the warden and deputy warden, 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 verbal directive that was in conflict with established north central unit policy. So we fast forward to, I believe it was May the 14th, 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 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 document acknowledging that they were present for the staff meeting, but nowhere in that document is there language regarding the supervision of inmates on the back dock. When the manager was interviewed, the kitchen manager, who presented this meeting to the supervisors, He referenced one of the bullet points that highlighted something regarding making sure
that the back door stay locked, and his statement was that he furthered that bullet point in conversation with the supervisors and articulated that inmates were not to be on the back dock unsupervised. When we interviewed the supervisors who attended this meeting, three of them indicated that that was not relayed to them, and one of them said that it was. So we have
some confusion on whether or not this verbal directive was appropriately articulated to the supervisors of the kitchen. Like I said, we've got three of them that say it wasn't told to them, 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 that happens, the scenario should be that the administration at the North Central Unit then take the steps necessary to change the policy. They need to have meetings of the leadership there and of the administration
and of members of the staff. There's a review process, and ultimately the warden would sign off on any policy changes. So by the verbal directive being given, that's fine. But the investigation shows that 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 was concerning. The guard in the tower, you know, I believe
Speaker 96
33:51
the investigation clearly shows that he,
There was a lack of vigilance there, and by his own admission, there was complacency there. He was clearly at fault, you know, not verifying
Speaker 95
34:15
who it was that was wanting to leave the facility. I know that there was some discussion in prior meetings or prior hearings that was his behavior reckless.
I don't think it was. Whenever you try to categorize something as reckless, my understanding is that the person conducting the reckless behavior needs to do so knowingly. And the investigation clearly shows that the tower guard would have never opened the gate if he knew that that was Grant Harden wanting to exit the facility.
You know, due to inmate Harden's disguise and lack of vigilance by the tower guard, You know, those were factors, significant factors, in Harden being allowed to leave the property. But I don't believe 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, did your investigation determine whether or not that was the first and only time that that guard let someone out without checking their ID,
Speaker 95
36:05
or was that commonplace practice? I believe the investigation shows that it is the responsibility of the guard to, when someone approaches, to exit the tower. They go out onto the catwalk and they identify the individual.
If that individual is an employee of the prison or someone that would be normally allowed to come and go, then the tower guard can open that gate. How many times this happened prior to inmate Harden escaping, I have no idea. Thank you. Representative Beatty,
did you have a question?
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
36:53
Well, maybe just clarification. We're talking
about supervision and supervised on the dock, but that could be direct supervision, or I read somewhere in the report that it was customary practice to notify the guard tower that inmate was going to be on the dock unsupervised. I think I read that somewhere in here. So are we straight on the meeting they had was for direct supervision on the loading dock?
Is that what the one member was saying? And the kitchen manager said direct supervision, meaning that a guard was with that prisoner on the back dock versus just notifying the tower that there's going to be a prisoner, an inmate out on
Speaker 95
37:50
the dock. Yes, that was our understanding, that there needed to be direct supervision, not just notifying a tower 75 yards away. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 96
38:09
Other issues of concern that were identified involved the
Speaker 95
38:16
policy structure of the Arkansas Department of Corrections. There are essentially three levels, 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 administrative directive states that there's a commander's checklist and essentially the warden would be responsible for notifying state and local law enforcement. And then you have 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 an escape.
So we've got a clear breakdown in communication between the three levels. Everybody has different requirements in regards to an escape and who is ultimately responsible for making the
was the pine bluff radio
Speaker 114
40:23
room notified the pine bluff radio room was
Speaker 95
40:28
notified and the pine bluff radio room you know it is not their position that it that it's their responsibility to notify law enforcement or or state police um but it is and it was their responsibility to issue a bolo which which was attempted
by the radio room but uh there again was there was another uh failure um 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 we've got an escape. However, the Arkansas Department
of Corrections employee 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 bluff radio room an 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 supervisor in the radio room was unaware of this failure, so ultimately there was no BOLO sent out by the Pine Bluff radio room in regards to the escape. So, you know, there's several concerns there that we've highlighted.
Special Agent Champagne focused his efforts on the notification process and who was notified and when, and he can provide information in regards to that. So in looking at the notification process,
Speaker 93
42:50
I broke it down into three main issues. And I know
Speaker 118
42:54
you guys haven't had 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 and the other hand didn't know what each other was doing. So you had the warden on the property who, to my understanding, would be considered the ultimate commander. He was there when the escape happened. However, the investigation is 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, mind 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 has led to why law enforcement, state police, local, there was two agencies notified in total that day by ADC from what we've discovered. we go back to the operational deficiencies. The captain had assigned a corporal to begin making notifications. 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 the communications had already or notifications 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 realize that law enforcement wasn't notified they they just assume because law enforcement
It started showing up that the job had gotten done. Essentially, law enforcement is notifying each other, and that's how it happened. That's how we all got there. And then, like Mike 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've got the secretary level at the cabinet. You've got the administrative,
which is Mr. Payne, at the directorial 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 in this notification process. However, I've got to say that that was not the issue that day. 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 bluff radio 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 pine bluff radio room interviewing them they were unaware of that policy as well they they said 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 were not um and then then again as he talked about the bolo the error the
formatting error that was in the pine blow freddy room they were responsible for issuing the bolo that would have went out to terminals to law enforcement across the state we would have been instantly notified that there was an escape that was kind of a as you say a fail safe 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 other issues. Local residents, there is no, as far as
we're aware, automated system 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 mountainous terrain. We don't know how many people can actually hear that. They had to actually pick up the phone and call each residence in the area to notify these people that an escape had happened. And obviously they're not going to reach everybody, but that's the system that's in place at the moment. And possibly cross-training
issues. The captain that was attempting, that 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. These are all time-sensitive things that are wasting time. So just extra things that compile on to notification process. So once again, these policy issues that we've identified, we identified them later on, and we did make them aware of it, but they don't seem to be essential to the escape itself
and the notification issues that day. It was stemming from operational deficiencies, communication breakdowns, and the human error. 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?
Speaker 92
49:23
I don't think I'm qualified to answer that question, to be honest with you. One thing I will
Speaker 118
49:29
say is that in speaking with Secretary Wallace, the top two layers of policy are reviewed yearly from her cabinet level and from the administrative level. And they're looked at to make sure they conform with law 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 to director pain 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 higher ups and those are very specific he gave me the example of if say for instance there's 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 um this one clearly
stepped on the higher policies and it it wasn't recognized or known because it didn't go further than than the warrant at the unit okay
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
50:40
thank you representative well i just want to kind of follow up 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 but 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 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
Speaker 118
51:26
problems there were policy issues identified um i'm not
the policy issues that we identified i'm not certain that they were the cause of the communication breakdown that day they were identified the three men issues that we believe contributed to the communication breakdown was operational as I described with it with it 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 communication breakdown and then yes the human error um where you could have had fail safes that fail safe wasn't there because of the human error so that would
Speaker 93
52:30
be the three main issues that i that I identified. Yes. Thank you. Senator Gilmore.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
52:40
Thank you. And would you mind just
over here? Yeah. Would you mind
going through that again? Because I 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? Sure. Give us an example of operational deficiencies.
Speaker 93
53:00
So the main thing that we identified was that the captain at the unit
Speaker 118
53:10
who was essentially, the warden was at the unit as well. I mentioned that
prior. However, the captain during this regular working day was essentially the one who's the shift supervisor, 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
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
53:35
there at that day. So there's uncertainty
Speaker 118
53:38
of duties, perhaps. Yeah, it could be, yeah, it could be confused because the amount of things he appeared to have been expected to do, I don't know that 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
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
54:01
from somebody higher than him. Okay. And
if the chair would give a little attitude here, and we'll take a second. All right, so that alone, let's break that down. Is that what
Speaker 118
54:11
dictates those operations to happen? They have policy and escape procedures, Um, and from the understanding we have from looking at them, once again, 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
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
54:36
then it falls down from him and there's policy that dictates
that. Okay. But the captain was running the show. Captain had a lot of responsibilities. Okay, well, I'll
Speaker 95
54:48
take that as he was handling it. And I can add to that that the internal affairs investigation conducted by the Arkansas Department of Corrections
found Warden Hearst to be in violation of policy by not assuming the role of ultimate commander in the onset of the escape. At what point did he step in and assume control or command? I
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
55:14
can't answer that question. I
Speaker 118
55:17
don't know 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
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
55:39
stated. You're in command or I'm in command. Okay. So policy
dictated one thing, other things happened. Okay. What was the third? There were three. There
was that. There was operations. What was the next one? Communications. Communications. All right, let's
Speaker 118
55:53
talk about that. So one of the big errors, I ran through it quickly with the law enforcement notifications. The captain had originally assigned a corporal to begin, they call it the red book.
It's basically, it's a manual. We got an escape. They flipped the escape section. Here's what you do. here's notifications you make this is what you do let's start this this this 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
And we have that in the report. Nobody was assigned to pick up his duties. And that's where law enforcement notifications stopped, right there. And it was asked about, 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. Right, for us. And captain said, let me check. He stepped in and asked the warden, has everything, everybody 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. That's what the warden assumed the captain was asking about. and the captain assumed warden knows what he's talking about so there was
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
57:41
the communication breakdown okay and and i presume latitude mr chair
i presume policy dictates who's to be
notified and like when that starts uh once again there's
Speaker 118
57:51
identified clashes between three but if we're going down to the level above the units 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 highest-ranking officer there would have been ultimately responsible for assigning that. Got it. What was the third one? Human error. Okay. Well, that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
58:09
one's clear. Correct. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
58:20
Representative Beatty. I guess my question, in your report, I think the information that was provided to us was broken down into maybe 10 different sections, maybe a little bit more than that in exhibits. 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.
Speaker 118
58:51
They're in-depth. There's multiple, multiple interviews that Special Agent McNeil did and that I did. I can't sit here and tell you a page number. I don't have all, like you just referenced, there's hundreds of pages, but they are labeled. It would be such as interview of Ward and Hurst, interview of, 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. Okay. Mr. Champagne, are you familiar with the National Incident Management System standards?
be able to go in depth with you on that. Did your investigation determine what training took place in order to prepare
Speaker 118
59:40
for an incident such as this? That is not the portion that I – I was specifically on
Speaker 96
59:48
notification and the communications thereof. That is
Speaker 95
59:51
the only thing that I specifically handled. I think Adrian McNeil 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 things like that.
So that is in the investigative file.
Speaker 153
1:00:13
Okay. Thank you. My board is clear. You
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:00:18
got another one? President Beatty. In your electronic version of this report, your copy that you have, I'm certain you have that on your computer or a flash drive, is there a searchable index where you could search and readily find everywhere within this document that there is a reference or a mention?
We don't have what you have. I mean, I've just got a scanned-in copy is all I've got. We got it 420 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 the information that I want since I got it at 420 yesterday. I'm
Speaker 118
1:01:00
going to assume this is this assumption they gave it to you in a PDF format, and you can do that 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
1:01:12
that – I've got 10 or 11 PDFs is my issue of 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 guess I'll take the time 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. Would you
like to introduce yourself and be recognized? Did you have something to add? My
Jason Aaron
Unverified
1:01:36
name is Jason Aaron with the Arkansas State Police,
lieutenant colonel over uh highway patrol criminal investigation and crowns against children division okay 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 Okay, committee, we're going to 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 Ms. Hughes, if you would join us, please. Yes, that's fine.
What did you say? We can't hear you. What did you say, Madam Secretary? and
you better introduce yourself for the record again tawny hughes chief
Speaker 167
1:02:41
counsel department of corrections members i believe what we're
going to be going over is handout d1 which you should have
Speaker 12
1:02:49
in front of you lindsey wall is secretary for the department i'm sorry i didn't hear you the first time i'm sorry dexter
pain director for division of correction all 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
Speaker 32
1:03:09
whatever your preference well I'm gonna go as brief as y'all let me go since you have it in front of you and 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 policy, 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 um 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 or 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 um it's really clear now that they need to be checking the picture to make sure it's valid every year on annual review um making sure the emergency contacts are up to date and then also pushing that little recompute 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. 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 uh data so um the policies governing governing notification um once again there's kind of different notification policy for each unit and we are having the units look at those um i will say i think maybe the last time we hear we were here we talked about updating the secretarial directive on notifications uh secretary wallace myself and one of my deputies sat down and probably tried 45 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 um she can tell me if i have a misstating this okay um effectively what we decided was we would rather notify people twice than notify them not at all um so we're going to leave the secretarial directive as it is um and leave that internal
affairs investigator internal affairs administrator notification in place as kind of a fail safe um so that we can make sure that law enforcement's being notified at that level at the very least so um that's kind of my big picture
and i'll take any questions thank you for that is uh is is the
department division in compliance with the national incident management system standards
Speaker 17
1:07:49
have to take uh we start out at the training academy we teach uh the nims 100 there uh then uh ranking staff take the 300 400 series as well as seven and 800 i've i've taken one three four seven and eight for sure i think more than that but i know i've taken
those because it just 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 um but when you have employees who are in a stressful situation you know usually that's where you rely on training to keep people focused to keep people on task uh 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 yes so that so that there's
oversight there's double as you just said we're doing it twice right 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
Speaker 17
1:09:06
yes sir and training uh is something that we definitely need to do more
Speaker 173
1:09:10
of uh and i assure you we will be doing more training uh concerning the
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:09:15
the neums okay representative collins thank you mr chair so i think that
the previous state police folks were talking about it came down to calling people in the area just making calls as best they could obviously 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 anywhere else in the country that have a better system for notifying people in
Speaker 17
1:09:58
the area yes something like this yes sir we had a fairly good system i think uh up until about March of this year, we had an alert express system that notified people for an incident such as this, and that went away in March. So now we're working on, Secretary, if I'm correct, we're working with state police on a notification system now to basically notify everyone. It hits
everybody's cell phone that we've had an issue at the facility. Similar
Speaker 177
1:10:26
to like an amber alert, a silver 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 Express.
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:10:36
Okay, well that's good because that sounds much better. Why did the other one go away? You said
Speaker 181
1:10:42
it went away in March. I don't know. I don't remember the answer. It wasn't of
Speaker 173
1:10:47
our, was it the contract? No, I don't think it was a contract. I think the company My deputy
Speaker 183
1:11:00
something from the audience if y'all don't mind him to come up yeah he's saying it went away due the due to the technology of the system was that was
Speaker 12
1:11:08
outdated outdated system technology okay well uh do you have
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:11:13
any sense of when the new system will be back up and running so we have something better in place for people can we get some latitude for
Speaker 31
1:11:21
the deputy chief of staff to take my chair for a moment? Yes, that's fine. Okay. Oh, never mind. I didn't realize there was
Speaker 11
1:11:27
an MTC. He can have the fourth. That's fine. Please introduce yourself for the record.
Speaker 191
1:11:37
Good afternoon. Nicholas Stewart, Deputy Chief of Staff. We have a meeting with Major Stacey Rose 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
Speaker 191
1:11:57
was going away and we didn't plan for it to go away I think in talking to direct the pain from my memory we did not know it's a third party vendor that ACIC utilizes and we have a different partnership but there
was something else and we were not we were not informed that the system was going away instead of us a phone call one
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:12:17
day that says it's ending so we don't quite know I guess when the new system will be up you'll know more after the meeting and yes sir representative rye
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
1:12:34
thank you thank you mr. chairman mr. yes 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 one anything there you know a couple of years ago this did come up and we felt like that we had 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 okay yes sir thank you sir thank you mr. chairman representative
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:13:12
bitty i just want to go back and i'm still kind of hung up on the disciplinary action and maybe the first comments were made on this hard and 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 think when when you first spoke about this and i'm specifically speaking to dexter pain 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
Speaker 17
1:14:17
stand on those two employees were the main characters for this escape.
We did find that we had policy issues once we determined, you know, during the escape we found that. But to push a button and let an inmate outside or let an unknown person outside of the gate is a human error. I stand on that. You know better. That's pretty much common sense that you
Speaker 37
1:14:46
don't let somebody out the gate that you don't know. We're security.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:14:53
Specifically dealing with the kitchen staff
and the terminated employees. I understand the guard and the guard tower just, like you said, made a mistake and wasn't thinking and pushed a button and just let the guy walk out. Kitchen staff, there seems to be some confusion on whether or not there was a written directive. 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 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 kitchen, you still stand firm that that was fair and prudent action on that one employee? On that one employee, but we took action on most of
Speaker 17
1:15:52
the kitchen staff. But that was after the fact. Yes, sir.
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:15:57
I was after the fact there you've been any disciplinary action
Speaker 17
1:16:02
on the warden Oh at this time we haven't taken any disciplinary action on the warden and I do understand the state police report Saying some confusion about the national incident management system, but it is just like today I'm the director for the division of correction. I'm sitting here with you. That doesn't mean I'm not in charge of Delta Dermott It means that I'm the
Speaker 37
1:16:23
incident commander and the warden was there that day But that NIMS also tells you about command staff.
Speaker 17
1:16:32
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 I understand there was confusion between him and the warden because 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 NIMS tells us to do. So your short answer is no. No, I have not taken corrective action on the warden. Are you going to? Possibly. I
Speaker 153
1:17:22
mean, I'll further look at this. That's 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 it comes down to the leadership of the captain right whether 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 great so this is not just about two employees no this is a failure systemically because we didn't have the training, because we didn't have the policies worked
Speaker 37
1:17:53
out. Well, I was referring 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're recognized. Thank you. Thank you all for being
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:18:10
here. So I'm going to start with you, Director Payne. Okay. I know you're excited, aren't you? Yes, sir. So 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
Speaker 37
1:18:34
pretty accurate report. But as far as the portion where the kitchen supervisors weren't told, there's a situation there where they're told that, you know,
that door cannot be unlocked without a supervisor present. Well, if a supervisor is not there and they don't unlock the door, the inmate is not out. So I know it doesn't just specifically say don't let an inmate on the back dock. I know it doesn't say that, but it's telling them without a supervisor present, don't unlock that door. Okay. So
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:19:02
that's the only thing that comes to mind on the report? Well, we've
Speaker 20
1:19:06
definitely got some policy issues we've got to work through. So you agree with that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:19:10
part of the report? Yes, sir. Okay. Great. Anything else?
Speaker 206
1:19:16
No, sir. No other issues. Okay. Ms. Wallace?
Speaker 41
1:19:21
Thank you, Senator. I mean, I tend to agree with what Director Payne said. I think they
Speaker 42
1:19:26
did a really good thorough investigation talking to a lot of folks. I think it was a factual sort of takeaway of everything. And, you know, they said a lot, just kind of what Mr. Champagne said up here. 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. Ms. Rowell 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 breakdown. 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 review.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:20:18
So it sounds like to me it goes beyond
Speaker 42
1:20:23
two people. There were definitely breakdowns, I think, in a lot of it. I think there were some lax behaviors on lots of staff, but I think Director Payne's addressed a lot of those already with, or at least the unit has, with their disciplinaries. And I think we'll still probably be digesting this. We haven't really had. I mean, Representative Beatty mentioned it. It's a very long report. I think 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.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:20:50
Sure. Well, I think everybody has to digest considering we just got it. So there's that.
Look, from our perspective, what's predictable is preventable, right? We don't want this to happen. 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 fail safes 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 record director pain 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
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 ended 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 thank you representative Collins yeah just to
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:22:27
feel like i hear you guys acknowledging over and over again
that it is more than just two people i mean you're going to improve the training and you acknowledge that the report is accurate and you're going to 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 am I getting that right yes sir that's correct
Speaker 77
1:22:59
I think more needs to be addressed and when I see it to people I was talking about particularly the
Speaker 17
1:23:05
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
Speaker 37
1:23:15
My, my, my approach to the two people is solely for how he got out that fence. But there
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:23:22
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 measures in place that you guys, I think, have acknowledged need to be done, need to be taken.
Speaker 17
1:23:42
Yes, sir. We've taken some additional measures. I mean, we've 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
Speaker 178
1:23:52
open that gate. So we've done some things of that nature to make sure we hope not to have this mistake happen
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
1:23:59
again. Okay. Well, I just, you know, I hear Representative Beatty and I hear Senator Gilmore asking this question over and over, and I feel the same way they do. It's like, and then I hear you guys coming so close to acknowledging and agreeing with them, but somehow stopping short.
So I'm glad to hear that it sounds like you actually are acknowledging
Speaker 214
1:24:21
and agreeing with them without putting words in your mouth. Yes, sir.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:24:25
Thanks. Senator Deese. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do you do mock training, live trainings for these critical incidences? Yes, sir. Yes,
Speaker 17
1:24:35
sir. So we do quarterly training and then we have a large-scale drill annually for each facility.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:24:41
Okay, wonderful. And then reporting structure-wise, does the warden report to you?
Speaker 178
1:24:52
deputy directors. Who is that? I'm sorry. Currently the deputy director for that unit, we don't have one, but at that
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:24:59
time it was William Strong. Okay, and why is that person not here anymore? Is that related
Speaker 178
1:25:05
to this escape or is it unrelated? No, sir. We had a person retire. We just haven't had
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:25:12
a – we can't fill the position. So that's been empty for a while. So from an after-action review, the direct supervisor over the warden
has been empty for a while. Who has been in communication with that warden about training and about fixing the problems?
Speaker 17
1:25:29
I have someone filling in that role right now, And I'm taking on some extra duties, too, to make sure
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:25:37
we do that. And it was made
aware to me that this individual had been let go, this warden, and had been brought back. And so that's concerning. And then we also have this incident happen under his watch.
Are we confident this is the right person to be in charge of that command, of
Speaker 17
1:26:04
that unit? Yes, sir. I'm confident he was let go previously about 12 13 12 or 13 years ago for a different incident. He was allowed to come back. I think because When he was terminated, I think the director that allowed him to come
Speaker 197
1:26:19
back Felt that he wasn't necessarily the reason for the incident that happened that caused his termination previously
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:26:26
Okay So, the entire leadership structure at North Central Unit, in your opinion, is being adequately trained and has the backgrounds needed for future leadership in that role? Yes, sir. And we provide
Speaker 17
1:26:44
the training. It's your comprehension of the training. And we think we do provide training. But we're sure going to make sure
Speaker 178
1:26:52
that they get additional training to make sure that they can adequately do their job.
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
1:26:58
And we as Department of Corrections? Yes, sir. Okay. All
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:27:08
right. Thank you. Senator Gilmore. Thank you. Just to pick
up where Senator D's stop. So 12 years ago, who was the director then? It wasn't you, right? No, sir. It was Ray
Hobbs. Ray Hobbs. Okay. Okay, and how did he come
Speaker 178
1:27:28
back? He was allowed to come back by former director, Wendy Kelly.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:27:32
Okay. And remind me of the circumstances of his previous termination. There was a
Speaker 173
1:27:40
sexual harassment complaint that wasn't handled correctly at the facility and several staff. Okay, and was he cleared of all of that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:27:50
I didn't make that decision. I understand, but, I mean, you're
who's sitting here. Yes, sir. I mean, you've been in the department, maybe not in that role.
Speaker 77
1:28:04
Yes, sir. Yeah. So, yes, sir, he was cleared to come
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:28:09
back. Okay, okay. And you weren't there, Secretary. You were at a different agency, I presume.
Yeah, okay. Can we talk about the kitchen staff for a second? So, that person was fired, terminated, right? Yes, sir. During this ordeal or after this situation? Yes, sir. Do you think that was the right decision? Yes, sir.
Speaker 173
1:28:34
Okay. Can you elaborate? I think once this person had been told that he could not allow inmates on the back dock alone
Speaker 178
1:28:45
and he did it anyway, I think he failed to obey his orders. Okay. Who oversees
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:28:51
him or her or that person? The deputy warden. Okay. So what about the deputy
Speaker 17
1:29:02
warden? The deputy warden is the one that basically gave the instructions to not do it.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:07
Okay. But who oversees the day-to-day and knows if he's following the policy or procedures? The food production manager. Okay,
Speaker 178
1:29:13
well then maybe that person. Yeah, okay. So was that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:15
person doing their job? No, sir. Okay, well then why not them? They're terminated. That one too? Yes, sir. So how many have been terminated at this point? Three at this point. Okay, okay. So who does that person report
Speaker 219
1:29:35
to? That person reports to the deputy ward.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:29:37
Okay, well there we are back again. I mean, you see my point. Like, at some point when it's just, when you start just terminating people, maybe they 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 fail-safes 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 horse here, but, like, the point my making is you can keep going up the food chain, right?
Speaker 17
1:30:14
Right. But if that deputy warden was the one that originally saw them breaking policy and instructed them, that was the purpose of that meeting, and they had to sign. Sure. If he was the one that caught them and told them not
Speaker 178
1:30:26
to do it again. Yeah, 100%. Where's his fault?
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:30:32
Well, who's to make sure that they follow his rules or his orders? Him and the kitchen captain. Right. So my point is we can keep going in circles on this, right?
But 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, then we don't have to play the game. Right. You follow? Yes, sir.
Thank you. My board is cleared. Any other questions?
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:31:15
Representative Beatty. Just one question, kind of to follow back up, and also since this is on actual the review of DOC policies and protocols regarding security. A few years back, there was reference to a study that I think may be a grant money where we spent $453,000 for a study to study and assess the program, culture, and climate in Arkansas, and prison culture and climate in Arkansas, and mainly go over operational issues within Department of Corrections and Community Corrections.
It was supposed to be a four-year study conducted by Dr. Mary Parker, Dr. Robert Lytle, and Dr. Molly Smith. And that was supposed to be completed maybe April of this year. I was just wondering if that's been completed. Do you all have a copy of that? Is it something that
Speaker 177
1:32:13
is shareable with this committee? It is partially
Speaker 42
1:32:16
completed, Representative Beatty. So Dr. 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 you 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 Payne, 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 have
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:32:46
all those grant monies been expended or is there still some hold back uh on that for completion of this report that was i think it went through the study went through april of 25
Speaker 42
1:32:57
and i don't know the answer to that i do believe my procure well 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
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
1:33:17
that'd be great and if we can we can get you back on that you can you can double check and come back to us on that but probably 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 okay so we look forward to seeing that report mainly to make certain that we knew something about if we spent 453 thousand dollars on it thank you and that brought
another question to my mind uh the department has not filled the policy
coordinator position at this time i can
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
Speaker 42
1:34:02
position so we've talked about the position the board of corrections and i talked about it i'm 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 miss ral 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 are 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 okay 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 mr. to let mr. Hodges if you'd introduce yourself for the record
Speaker 231
1:35:09
Yes, I'm Brandon Tallinn. I'm a member of the Arkansas Board of Corrections.
Dr. Byers. Sorry. Do that again, Mr. Tallinn. Sorry. I'm Brandon Tallinn, and
Speaker 234
1:35:21
I'm a member of the Arkansas Board of Corrections. I'm Dubs Byers,
Speaker 235
1:35:27
member of the Board of Corrections. Grant Hodges, member of the Board of Corrections. 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 wanted to open it up for questions.
If you have anything you want to say,
Speaker 234
1:35:48
now's the time. I would like 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. okay we'll move to members senator gilmore i think uh
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:36:12
extremely thorough and lengthy would be accurate to describe that mr chair i'd like to um following up on the question you just asked
the last group i'd like to hear from the board um basically their thoughts on that question and and if i make sure i actually get your your question is there any sort of roadblock or
Speaker 239
1:36:40
hold up on the policy position within corrections. Senator Gilmore, not that I
Speaker 235
1:36:45
know of, not that I know of, I would point out that there are mechanisms in place for the development of policy.
I mean, it's not like we don't have a policy development procedure right now. We have policy development on the community correction side as well as on the Division of Correction and on the community correction side, as well as there are individuals in the secretary's office that are assigned to policy development. I guess probably that may be part of the reason is because right now there have been individuals who have been covering that.
Speaker 239
1:37:29
But as far as there being a roadblock, I'm not familiar with one. To any of the
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:37:36
three of y'all, have you filled that position then? No, sir, we
Speaker 234
1:37:43
haven't filled the position. Or the Department of Corrections hasn't filled it. We can't
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:37:47
fill the position. Well, I presume y'all okay it, right? I mean, you
Speaker 241
1:37:52
would approve it. We do give the okay on those. And to follow up with what Dr. Byers mentioned, there were some other positions that were needing filled that we've been trying to get filled as well.
And so that took priority. Specifically, one is an attorney position that falls under Director Payne that we've struggled getting filled. 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. Okay. And what other positions then have
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:24
taken priority over this one? I don't think that there are
Speaker 241
1:38:28
any others. That's the only one that I recall. Okay.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:33
So how long have we been looking at this position? For quite a while.
Speaker 241
1:38:42
Are you talking about the policy coordinator? The policy position. It was brought to the board's attention, I believe, two meetings ago. And that's the last time that the board has actually spoken about the position. But it was two meetings ago. I don't have the date off the top of my head. And not before that, that you recollect? Not that
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:38:55
I recall, no. Okay. Mr. Hodges, you're the only one that hadn't spoken.
Speaker 247
1:39:04
Do you care to jump in there? I agree with everything Mr. Tullett has said. Okay. I think we're all eager to fill that position
Speaker 242
1:39:13
and continue to work on these policies. Okay. Do you foresee that getting
filled soon? I certainly hope so. Okay, gentlemen, I'm done with the question. So it was mentioned that we have committees that do policy and all these other things, but it's obvious that that is not working right now.
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 interdepartmental? Somebody
Speaker 241
1:39:52
behind me may be able 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 and shared services under the legal division that also
Deals with policies along with other things, but
Speaker 231
1:40:10
I believe there are two positions that that work on those Okay, specifically, okay Senator Gilmore Thank you so
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:40:17
we have positions one in corrections one in community corrections correct correct that has been the way the system is okay 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 mean i'm just trying to figure
Speaker 241
1:40:50
out why this hasn't been done. I understand what you're saying, Senator. You're saying because when we look at the communication policies that we just spent 30 minutes talking about or so, there were differences in between the unit policies versus the secretarial directors. Inconsistencies, right, that just don't help any crisis. That is correct. And I will say that I do think some sort of centralized position
can help alleviate some of that um 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 specifically the attorney position is a long-standing position that we've been trying to get um field for the department of corrections to be able to help not just with the escape but any kind of you know legal situation that comes up and so i don't think the board has an issue feeling a coordinator position i don't think that's it i I think the issue is we have
Speaker 234
1:41:42
positions that have been a priority for a long period of time that we're trying to get filled as well.
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:41:48
Okay. And that attorney position is the one you're speaking of that you've been trying to
fill? Yes, sir. Okay. That's the one that I can recall. Okay. And so does that position exist currently, or is that a new position? That position exists currently. The legal position? The legal position exists currently. Okay, and it exists outside of legal department or
the legal? Because you have legal staff, correct?
Speaker 241
1:42:14
Shared services has legal staff. There was a position within the Department of Corrections,
Speaker 234
1:42:19
and I can't tell you the title of it off the top of my head. I just know it's
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
1:42:25
an attorney position that directly advises Director Payne. Okay, but shared services legal can't offer legal advice
Speaker 241
1:42:35
to Director Payne? They can. I think they have been. I think it's a little disjointed in the way that it is because Dexter needs somebody, or Director Payne, I apologize, needs somebody that he can call or go meet with at his office,
which I believe is located in Pine Bluff, whereas our shared services legal department is located in Little Rock. Okay.
So you said that, did I hear you correctly, the department and the division have folks that work on policy yes we should get those two together i agree 100 okay because obviously that's a major issue so they haven't gotten together yet
Speaker 241
1:43:20
no they have they have in fact though when when the coordinator position um 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 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
Speaker 234
1:43:47
was an issue so we as a board recommended that they meet more frequently and they meet in person so
Speaker 241
1:43:53
so that we can get those addressed. Okay. Any other questions? Anything further? No, I do want to, I would like to say 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 training on low frequency but high risk 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 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 is no other business we are adjourned Thank you.
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
Senator Matt McKee Chair
Unverified
Speaker 3
Senator Tyler Dees
Unverified
Speaker 7
Speaker 12
Speaker 17
Speaker 20
Representative Jason Nazarenko
Unverified
Speaker 32
Speaker 40
Speaker 42
Chair
Unverified
Speaker 35
Speaker 63
Speaker 65
Speaker 70
Representative Howard M. Beaty, Jr.
Unverified
Speaker 77
Speaker 91
Speaker 93
Speaker 95
Speaker 96
Speaker 98
Speaker 114
Speaker 118
Speaker 92
Senator Ben Gilmore
Unverified
Speaker 129
Speaker 153
Jason Aaron
Unverified
Speaker 167
Speaker 173
Representative Andrew Collins
Unverified
Speaker 177
Speaker 181
Speaker 183
Speaker 31
Speaker 11
Speaker 191
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Speaker 37
Speaker 201
Speaker 206
Speaker 41
Speaker 210
Speaker 178
Speaker 214
Speaker 219
Speaker 197
Speaker 231
Speaker 234
Speaker 235
Speaker 239
Speaker 241
Speaker 247
Speaker 242