Escape Is Not First to Hit High-Security Units : Corrections: Three jailbreaks from special facilities at Pitchess have occurred since 1985. In one, seven inmates fled.

The maximum-security North Facility at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho, from which 14 inmates escaped Sunday morning, had another mass escape in 1985, when seven inmates--including a convicted murderer--fled after cutting a hole in wire mesh over the recreation area.

After that incident, Los Angeles County officials promised to stop sending inmates held on murder charges to the facility from the Men’s Central Jail in Downtown Los Angeles. But overcrowding forced inmates awaiting sentencing for all types of crimes--including murder--to continue coming to Pitchess, officials said.

To ease the strain of housing some of the county’s most violent criminals, a new maximum-security jail called the North County Correctional Facility was opened in 1990. The giant, $134-million complex consists of five smaller jails on 34 acres of the sprawling Pitchess ranch and boasts such electronic features as a central computer system that locks and unlocks all doors in the complex and a control center with 28 monitors hooked up to 128 cameras stationed throughout the complex.

But with only 2,000 beds at the state-of-the-art facility, there is simply not enough room for all high-risk inmates, said Lt. Nick Berkuta of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

“We mainly keep inmates (at the North County facility) who haven’t received their sentences yet,” Berkuta said. “But we just don’t have enough beds there, so we end up keeping people in the other maximum-security areas where beds are available.”

Escapes from Pitchess are relatively common, although most have involved inmates fleeing from the minimum-security unit alone or in small groups. “It was usually a situation where people just got lonely for their families and would leave,” said Santa Clarita Mayor Pro Tem Carl Boyer III. “But this escape is entirely different.”

“It is a shock,” said Santa Clarita Mayor Jo Anne Darcy. “There is certainly going to be further investigation to make sure that security is as high as it can possibly be in the future.”

In the past decade, three escapes have occurred in two of the jail’s three maximum-security units. In 1985, a paroled killer awaiting trial on two new murder charges escaped from the North Facility with six other inmates. All but one were recaptured in less than 24 hours, including the convicted killer. The last inmate was captured almost a month later.

In that escape, the inmates cut through a pipe in the wall of their second-story dormitory with a saw left by workers and forced open a heavy mesh window screen using a piece of the pipe. After lowering themselves to the ground with bedsheets, they scaled two 16-foot, chain-link fences topped with barbed wire.

At that time, authorities said it was the second escape from the maximum-security section in 20 years.

Four years later, an inmate accused of robbery and kidnaping cut a hole in the wire mesh over an enclosed recreation area of the North Facility, jumped off the building’s roof and scaled the barbed-wire fence.

After the escape, officials installed metal plating to replace the wire mesh. The man was never recaptured and was believed to have returned to his native Mexico.

A few days after that incident, a second inmate used the same escape method from the maximum-security East Facility. The inmate, convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and filing a false financial statement, was captured a week later.

The 2,800-acre Pitchess facility recently closed its only minimum-security unit due to county budget cuts. Most of the facility consists of open fields, and for decades the jail doubled as a work farm for low-risk inmates.