We have heard a lot about Clinton Correctional Facility, the maximum security prison in northern New York where two inmates escaped more than a...
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Jun 15, 2015 — by Brian Mann & Mark Kurtz (Photojournalist) , in Dannemora, NY
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Jun 15, 2015 — We have heard a lot about Clinton Correctional Facility, the maximum security prison in northern New York where two inmates escaped more than a week ago.
State police arrested Joyce Mitchell, a worker at the prison accused of helping the men. As the manhunt continues, authorities are still trying to sort out exactly how a pair of convicted murders were able to dig their way to freedom.
Brian Mann has been inside the walls of Dannemora several times and shares a rare glimpse of a world and a culture few people ever see. That culture may offer some clues about what went wrong.
Hidden by the imposing walls of Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., is a large open yard in which inmates have a surprising degree of autonomy. Photographer Mark Kurtz took this panorama for the tile spread of a 1997 article in Adirondack Life magazine. Used with permission
Clinton Correctional at Dannemora is one of the country's oldest prisons still in operation. This photo of a group of inmates dates from the 1870s. Photo: courtesy Terrance Gilroy, Dannemora Town Historian, and Adirondack Life magazine
The first time I went inside Clinton Correctional was more than a decade ago. I was there to do a story about the architecture and history of this prison, built in the Adirondack Mountains in the 1840s. When this week's prison break began, I listened back to that story and I found this moment describing the scene inside.
“Everywhere we go, prisoners are handling knives and power tools…”
Even then, that detail kind of freaked me out. And now power tools have become a big deal here.
Richard Matt and David Sweat used some kind of powered saw or cutting tool to cut their way through a steel wall and a steel steam pipe before escaping through a manhole cover.
There are a lot of questions about how they got that equipment. But the truth is, inmates in New York prisons work with tools all the time.“Any of the institutions are like that,” said Peter Light, who is retired now but he worked as a guard at Clinton Correctional Facility for three decades.He said using inmates to help with maintenance work is a cost-effective way to keep these old prisons running. "The maintenance is so large, so big, by using the inmate, you know they can take care of things, keep it up better – a lot of things can happen during that period of time," said Light.
He meant inmates have a lot of access to equipment and supplies and they also pick up a lot of information about how the prison works, the design of utility areas, and the layout.
Here is another thing I learned during my three trips inside Clinton-Dannemora. Inmates there also have a remarkable amount of time and freedom to share information with each other.
During one of the tours, veteran corrections officer Gene Palmer led me to the vast North Yard, a sprawling part of the prison thatinmates mostly control. “Looks crude," Palmer said, "but it works very well. They have gardens, we have expensive sides, we have nice real estate here, and we have poor real estate here.”
This part is so weird, so crazy, that it is a little hard to describe. Inmates who don’t make trouble, are allotted hundreds of little pieces of land called "courts." That's their turf.
Garden plots are landscaped and furnished with amenities such as Adirondack chairs, birdhouses, and barbecues. Photo: Mark Kurtz
All built by inmates, they strike an oddly homey note to be found in the shadow of the guard towers. Photo Mark Kurtz
Inside their courts, individual prisoners can make gardens or set up private recreation areas or keep barbecue grills.
Imagine a tailgate party a couple of football fields wide plunked down inside a maximum security prison and you sort of get the idea.
Palmer, acting as tour guide of the courts said, “Over here, we have all the Italians, they’ve got the money, the get the nice courts over here. On the wall over here, there's a man, he's a convict here, I believe he killed his wife, and he’s got the best court up on top.”
The way Palmer described it, this huge area of the prison is divided into a sort of pecking order along racial lines and among different organized gangs.
But the razor wire and steel gates are never far away. Photo: Mark Kurtz
More than a decade after that interview, the North Yard is still in place, part of the fabric of the prison's culture. Retired correction officer Peter Light, who is now Clinton Correctional Facility's historian, said giving inmates that kind of autonomy has mostly worked really well.
“It started in and the inmates enjoyed it, it was like an honor to be able to cook out in the yard and stuff like that and over the years it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And it ended up being a way that they could control things,” said Light.
He meant a way that the guards could control the inmates is to give prisoners an incentive to do their time here without causing trouble.
But now Light said a lot of questions will be asked — about the kinds of work inmates do and whether these old prison traditions made it easier for Richard Matt and David Sweat to hatch their escape.
New York prison commissioner Anthony Annucci said guards are now conducting an inventory of all the tools in all the state's correctional facilities. "We are competing our internal inventory of all of our tools instrument by instrument," the commissioner said. "So far all have been accounted for. In the meanwhile, what I have done is put out an instruction to all facilities to make sure they exercise the utmost vigilance and precaution in inventory control, too control and other basic security protocols. So that not only we insure that it never happens again at Clinton but at no other facility as well."
According to the New York Times, Governor Cuomo will announce a new probe later today to investigate what went wrong at Clinton-Dannemora prison that allowed this escape to happen.
Related Topics
criminaljustice · adirondacks · dannemora
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