Lancaster Prison’s Escapes Exceed the 1st-Year Norm : Incarceration: The breakouts ignite the fears of residents who fought the facility’s construction.

When a convicted murderer escaped from the new prison here last fall by scaling an eight-foot block wall and two 12-foot chain-link fences--all topped with razor wire--he also shattered a state safety benchmark.

Before that Oct. 6 breakout, California’s prison system had gone almost six years without an escape by a male maximum-security inmate.

Three months later, before the prison was even a year old, another maximum-security inmate escaped from Lancaster, this time by hiding in a garbage truck. He was crushed into a trash bale, then dumped at a landfill, where he was recaptured.

Prison officials have attributed these escapes to construction defects and staff errors--the sort of shakedown kinks that might be expected at a brand-new prison housing more than 3,000 maximum- and medium-security inmates.

But state records and interviews with officials at other new prisons in California show that Lancaster’s first-year break-out record was far worse than the norm.

“It is not typical of any institution to have Level IV (maximum-security) inmates escape, whether it’s in the first year or no matter how long they’ve been in operation,” said Tip Kindel, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections in Sacramento. “That is a very, very unusual event and one of very great concern to the department.”

The escapes were a key reason that state officials decided late last month to remove Otis Thurman as warden at the Lancaster prison. Thurman was urged to retire or accept a lesser position elsewhere. He has not announced his decision.

During Thurman’s tenure, two minimum-security inmates also escaped--triggering a firestorm of controversy.

“I think it’s an absolute embarrassment to the entire system that this brand-new prison--state of the art, supposedly--could have four escapes in one year,” said Danielle Marvin Lewis, a Lancaster businesswoman who led an unsuccessful fight to block the new prison. “We have a very volatile situation out there, sitting within a half-mile of a residential area.

“It’s like living next door to a dynamite factory, in my opinion.”

Officials note that maximum-security breakouts are indeed rare.

According to state records, only eight maximum-security inmates escaped statewide between April, 1982, and February, 1988--all from three of the state’s older prisons: San Quentin, Folsom and the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi. All but one was recaptured.

No maximum-security male inmates escaped from any California prison in 1989, 1990, 1991 or 1992, according to state records. In 1990, a woman inmate escaped from the California Institution for Women in Corona.

In 1993, the lone maximum-security escapee was Eric Rene Johnson, 23, who climbed over the Lancaster prison’s wall and fences. He was recaptured five hours later, outside a convenience market several miles away.

Even so, his escape ignited fear and anger among residents and led the City Council to drop its support for a proposed second state prison in Lancaster.

“A murderer who was escaping from their prison, desperate and capable of violence, was at loose on our streets while we slept,” resident Donna M. Reed told the council.

In a written report issued a month after the first escape, Warden Thurman said Johnson, after being assigned to work in a prison yard at 7 p.m., climbed over the wall while two guards were “simultaneously distracted.” (A state corrections official later said that no yard officer was supervising Johnson--a violation of prison rules.)

In his report, Thurman said that after Johnson got over the wall, “unnoticed, (he) waited behind the housing units, presumably until dark, when he scaled the inner and outer perimeter fences.”

Razor wire was installed atop the wall and fences to entangle and injure anyone who tries to scale the barriers. Prison officials have not publicly explained how Johnson got over the wire without being seriously injured.

Prison officers recaptured the inmate at 1:50 a.m. the next day. Prison administrators drew harsh criticism for failing to tell local sheriff’s deputies about the escape until two hours after it was discovered.

After the breakout and an investigation by state officials, Thurman vowed to increase the number of times inmates are counted each day from six to seven, and to step up security checks around the fences and housing areas.

In his report, the warden said state investigators attributed the escape to “staff negligence, construction deficiencies and procedural inadequacies.” (State prison spokesman Kindel later said the investigators “did not find any construction deficiencies in the escape route.”)

At the conclusion of his report, Thurman stated that the Lancaster prison would receive $25,000 to provide 800 more hours of training on escape procedures to all employees.

Nevertheless, the Lancaster prison was also the site of the only maximum-security escape reported so far in 1994.

On Jan. 13, Steven Charles Brigada, 25, serving a life sentence for attempting to murder a California Highway Patrol officer, was working in the prison kitchen. Although inmates are allowed to enter a garbage bin area only while accompanied by a guard, Brigada somehow slipped into a waste bin without being seen.

Prison guards escort garbage trucks in and out of the prison. But on this morning, no one saw Brigada as the truck lifted the bin that he was hiding in and emptied it into the vehicle.

The inmate was injured when the truck compressed its load, then emptied it at a local landfill. He was recaptured after calling for help at the dump.

Administrators at the prison have refused to provide further details on the two escapes or to discuss what disciplinary actions--if any--have been taken against guards who were on duty. They have said these are sensitive security and personnel matters, which require lengthy, confidential investigations.

Still, some members of the prison’s 15-member Citizens Advisory Committee have complained that the scarcity of information and Thurman’s low profile after the escapes only increased local fears about the institution.

“People need to be told what has taken place,” said Antelope Valley College President Allan Kurki, a committee member. “We have to build up a confidence base in the community, and it’s not going to happen if the only response we get is: ‘We can’t discuss this.’ ”

Thurman is on a personal leave and has been unavailable for comment since his removal. James H. Gomez, director of the California Department of Corrections, would not comment on the escapes or Thurman’s conduct as warden in Lancaster, a spokesman said.

Residents were particularly upset because the recent escapes involved maximum-security inmates. The breakouts confirmed the worst fears of residents and local officials who waged a vigorous campaign in the late 1980s to block construction of a prison in Lancaster.

Earlier in the decade, state lawmakers decided that a prison had to be built somewhere in Los Angeles County. They pointed out that the county was producing about 40% of the state inmates but had no prison within its boundaries.

In a 1987 “pain-for-pain” political compromise, state legislators ordered that one Los Angeles County prison be built in the predominantly Republican high desert, while the other would be in predominantly Democratic East Los Angeles.

Strong opposition from East Los Angeles residents killed plans for that prison. But a similar campaign in Lancaster, citing the prison’s potential impact on local water supplies, courtrooms and property values, failed.

“We specifically chose not to use the fear of escape as an issue because we thought that could create panic,” recalled Lewis, who chaired the committee opposing the Lancaster prison. “We thought there were more than enough other reasons not to build the prison.”

Still, many residents did say they feared that inmates would escape and harm people in neighborhoods near the prison. The site selected by the state was at 60th Street West and Avenue J, about four miles west of downtown Lancaster.

On Feb. 1, 1993, the $207-million prison, occupying a 252-acre site, opened. Local officials were so anxious to disassociate the community from the prison that they fought--successfully, this time--to keep “Lancaster” and “Antelope Valley” out of the prison’s name.

California State Prison--Los Angeles County was designed to house 2,200 inmates but because of statewide overcrowding problems, it now houses just under 4,000.

As of March 1, the prison housed 1,887 Level IV, or maximum-security, prisoners.

When inmates enter the state’s general prison population, they are assigned to one of four security levels, based primarily on the length of their sentence. Their background and their record of behavior behind bars are also considered.

Maximum-security inmates most often are convicted murderers and others who have committed violent crimes or multiple offenses that have led to long sentences. If a maximum-security prisoner maintains a good behavior record, he or she can eventually be moved to one of three lower-security levels.

Lancaster’s maximum-security inmates live in cells and are closely watched, but there are no Death-Row inmates--such prisoners are housed only at San Quentin.

To discourage escape, state officials have begun installing lethal electrified fences between the two chain-link barriers that surround most maximum-security prisons. Lancaster is slated to receive one, but a date has not been announced.

By contrast, minimum-security prisoners, who usually have committed nonviolent crimes and have short sentences, live in open dormitories with no fences around them.

Although the two maximum-security inmates who escaped from Lancaster set off the greatest uproar in the community, two minimum-security prisoners living in barracks outside the prison fences, also walked away in July.

Within four days, both were recaptured in the Los Angeles area, one after being involved in a carjacking, authorities said.

In addition to the four escapes, brawls have erupted among inmates and between inmates and guards at Lancaster. Guards have shot four inmates who ignored orders to stop fighting. No inmates died in these incidents.

Members of the prison’s advisory committee have said skirmishes are to be expected at a prison. But they did not expect the string of breakouts.

“I am totally overwhelmed that we have had four prisoners escape in less than one year,” said Howard Brooks, executive director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade and a member of the prison’s advisory committee.

“People are real concerned,” he added. “You have to assume that a prison is a prison--and none of this one-year shakedown business. It’s supposed to hold prisoners securely from day-one.”

The state operates 28 prisons. Lancaster is one of 11 housing Level IV inmates. But none of the other California prisons opened in recent years match Lancaster’s record for maximum-security escapes:

* No maximum-security inmates have escaped from seven-year-old California State Prison--Sacramento, which houses 3,000 Level IV prisoners, or from Pelican Bay in Crescent City, which opened in 1989 and houses 2,000 maximum-security inmates.

* No prisoners--maximum- or minimum-security--have escaped from Calipatria State Prison, which opened in January, 1992, or Centinela State Prison in Imperial, which opened in October.

* California State Prison--Corcoran has had no escapes by Level-IV inmates since it opened in February, 1988. In 1993, however, one medium-security prisoner got out by hiding in a laundry truck.

* No escapes have occurred at California’s two newest women’s prisons, which opened in Stockton in 1987 and in Chowchilla in 1990. At the California Institution for Women in Corona, which opened in 1952, the last maximum-security escape occurred in 1990.

* One of the older prisons, Tehachapi, which opened in 1933 as a woman’s facility, has had only one maximum-security escape since it was converted to a men’s prison in 1954. Convicted murderer Vincent Motley somehow obtained a guard’s uniform and used it to drive out of the facility on Feb. 1, 1988. He was recaptured about a week later.

At older prisons, guards must “walk the tiers” to keep an eye on the inmates. At the newer prisons, including Lancaster, guards can watch the inmates and open each cell electronically from a central, enclosed control booth. The new prisons also have fewer “blind spots” where inmates can avoid being seen by guards.

Jerry Enomoto, who was director of the California Department of Corrections from 1975 through 1980, said that even the most secure structures must rely on fallible human beings.

“Occasionally, through somebody’s error, escapes do happen--even at a Level-IV prison,” he said. “If escapes happen, you have to hold somebody accountable.”

Ultimately, it appears that Thurman, the warden, was held responsible for the maximum-security breakouts at Lancaster--and lost his job largely because of them.

“Yes, it was a factor,” said a prison system source. “It’s not that he did anything independently. But there was a management failure to make sure the staff implemented the proper procedures.”