By Bristow Marchant
The State
COLUMBIA, S.C. — State Sen. Shane Martin didn’t expect a new Senate panel overseeing the state’s prisons to meet so quickly.
“But given the considerable attention given to the Department of Corrections over the past few months,” the Spartanburg Republican said, “I wanted to move it up and start immediately.”
The committee met Thursday, just weeks after a S.C. inmate escaped for the second time from a maximum security prison.
Convicted kidnapper Jimmy Causey used a makeshift dummy to dupe corrections officers into thinking he was still in his bed at Ridgeville’s Lieber Correctional Institution on July 4. After his escape went unnoticed for 18 hours, Causey made it all the way to Texas, where he was captured three days later in a motel room near Austin.
Bryan Stirling, director of the S.C. Department of Corrections, said Causey used a contraband cell phone to plan the escape, and investigators think a drone was used to drop wire cutters onto the grounds to help Causey escape.
Three other people later were arrested for aiding Causey in his escape, charged with either wiring him money or providing him with transportation during his escape.
However, Causey’s escape wasn’t the main focus of Thursday’s meeting.
State Sen. Ross Turner, R-Greenville, told Stirling that legislators knew some questions could not be answered due to ongoing investigations within the prisons department.
Instead, Stirling focused on the challenges his department faces and what needs to be done to fix them.
Partly, that involves doing more to recruit and retain corrections officers.
About 30 percent of corrections posts are currently unfilled, Stirling said. During the day shift, the ratio of inmates to officers in a S.C. prison is 39-to-1, he said. It can increase to 80-to-1 at night.
Stirling thanked the senators for voting to spend more money to boost corrections officers’ pay, one solution to attracting more prison officers. “For a while, our corrections officers were making less than Wal-mart employees,” he said.
Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington, said she was contacted by a corrections officer who was upset the department was spending money on new uniforms for prisoners.
But Stirling said the uniforms — paid for with one-time money in the corrections budget — serve a purpose: They make escaped inmates more easily recognizable to the public.
Currently, state inmates wear khaki uniforms, an outfit that Stirling said makes them look like landscapers when they are outside the prison walls. The director recalled an inmate who escaped from a Columbia facility and simply walked down Broad River Road.
“Someone called when they recognized him at the Dollar General,” Stirling said.
“If they make the decision to walk away, I want them to be recognizable,” he said. With new uniforms, “they can be more easily identified.”
Sen. Karl Allen, D-Greenville, asked if the issues facing the department are having a negative impact on employees and inmates.
“The whole issue of escapes ... suggests to me that there’s a morale issue,” Allen said.
Sterling said he hopes corrections officers “see everything we’re doing for them.” The department is trying to boost recruitment and retention, raise officer pay and improve security features at prisons.
The Senate panel hopes to have recommendations ready for legislators when they return to the State House early next year.
“We want to be proactive rather than reactive,” said Martin, who chairs the Senate corrections committee. “That’s why we formed this committee before any of these incidents occurred.”