LOST … THEN FOUND
Another South Carolina inmate made a break for it this weekend … the latest bad news to befall the Palmetto State’s much maligned prison system.
Michael Allman, 37, walked off a work release job site in Rock Hill, S.C. on Friday, according to officials at the scandal-scarred S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDC).
Yeah … remember when we wrote about those programs?
Anyway, it’s not immediately clear when Allman was first reported missing … or whether his escaped had been planned in advance.
Fortunately he was apprehended by local law enforcement less than an hour after his escape was first publicized by the prison system.
Allman was incarcerated at the Catawba pre-release center in Rock Hill on a trio of charges. He was eligible for parole next May, and was scheduled for release in September of 2020.
Our guess is he will be locked up for a lot longer than that now … assuming our state’s prisons can hold him (or any inmate).
It’s been a brutal month for the Palmetto State’s prison system. On July 4, the escape of high-profile inmate Jimmy Causey from the Lieber Correctional Institution near Ridgeville, S.C. exposed a myriad of issues with this facility – and with the SCDC.
Were we surprised? No.
This website has covered numerous SCDC scandals over the years – including efforts by former governor Nikki Haley’s administration to cover up prison riots. Palmetto prisons have also served as a backdrop for sex scandals and murders. And serious sentencing errors.
Given this unacceptable state of affairs, this website has called on governor Henry McMaster to fire SCDC director Bryan Stirling as a necessary first step in beginning the long and arduous process of reforming this tattered bureaucracy.
“The inmates, not correctional officers, are effectively running South Carolina prisons,” we wrote earlier this month. “Not only that, many inmate leaders are basically using these facilities as fortresses to protect them from the consequences of their crimes.”
SCDC is slated to receive $482.3 million in the fiscal year that began on July 1 – an increase of 3.7 percent from the $464.7 million it received during the 2016-2017 fiscal year. According to its website, the agency employs 5,700 staffers and has 20,000 inmates at 22 different facilities.
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