Frank Smith speaks out on Charles McCluskey murder trial in Albuequerque Kingman escape

This case is a poster child for why inmates shouldn't be sent to for-profit prisons.
Management and Training Corporation (MTC) understaffed this Kingman prison with employees being, according to the warden, "80% new or newly promoted."

It was built on the cheap by Dominion of Edmund, OK, and like most or all of their speculative prisons, was grossly substandard. The state claimed it would only send minimum security offenders there, mostly those doing short terms for drunk driving offenses.

The alarms hadn't worked properly in years, some seven yard lights were burnt out, staff had no control over inmate identification and basic security procedures.

It happened because state regulators were uninterested in professional operation.

It grossly failed to oversee its operations and sent hordes of inappropriate prisoners to a place that could never expect to hold them securely. This included many lifers incarcerated for homicides, escape risks, members of security threat groups (STGs) such as neo-Nazis, and those with parole holds from other states.

As long as the campaign contributions kept rolling in, supposedly conservative legislators, executives and bureaucrats championed the nonexistent "savings" they provided. As long as the revolving door spun at a dizzying pace, no department of corrections official was likely to insist on delivery of anything remotely near the level and quality of contract performance that the state required.

Not that long afterward, Arizona did a research study that estimated that contract prisons cost the state 16% more, per prisoner, than did professionally managed state prisons handling matched populations.

On the evening of July 30th, 2010, the chickens came home to roost.

Three long-term inmates broke out with the assistance of the ringleader's girl friend, who reconnoitered the prison, then drove to its rear after sundown and threw small bolt cutters and other tools to breach the fence, as well as bags of pistols.

She had been arrested not two months earlier, for bringing drugs and other contraband into the prison. However, the Mohave County sheriffs offered her a deal: She could give up her suppliers, whom they said she claimed were neo-Nazis, and they would let her go free.

Of course, had she followed through, her fiancée would have been targeted after he got out of solitary for being on the receiving end of the smuggling.

On the fateful night, she had forgotten where she had parked the ringleader's Chevy Blazer, out there in the desert, so the four split up to search for it. One, Daniel Renwick, who was doing 44 years for a particularly cruel robbery-murder, quickly found the SUV and absconded with it, abandoning his confederates in the desert.

The accomplice and other two, John "Charlie" McCluskey, who was doing two 15-year sentences for attempted murders and who was a white supremacist, and Tracy Province, who was doing life for two murders, began walking through the desert like Moses, looking for a vehicle to steal or hijack.

It took over 100 minutes for the staff to discover the inmates missing from their dorm, but they weren't sure who was gone. Instead of reporting the escape to outside law enforcement and the Department of Corrections, they fiddled around, looking for them for another hour. Their motorized guard who had been making regular rounds, somehow repeatedly missed the huge hole in the outside perimeter's single fence.

The fugitives had by then walked miles before a helicopter showed to try to locate them in the sparsely vegetated desert. Unfortunately, it was operated as incompetently as the prison, and just circled the prison in tight circles, far from the escapees' location.

At last they arrived at an eastbound 18-wheeler that had stopped for a brake check miles south of Kingman at an I-40 exit. They took its East Indian drivers with them and drove to Flagstaff, stopping to call for assistance from friends and relatives along the way. Eventually, the ringleader's ex-wife agreed to pick them up and drove to meet them in Flagstaff.

At that location, they waited for their ride and the drivers agreed to wait 15 minutes after it arrived before sounding an alarm. They had taken $60 from one and $40 from the other, but rejected more, leaving each with more than half their cash.

McCluskey even turned down an offer by the owner/operator to go to an ATM to furnish them with more money.

The ex-wife dropped them off after stopping in Payson, then went on to Mesa. There they got another car and took off for a hideout in Southeast Arizona, only to find it occupied. They continued on toward their destination, Gentry, Arkansas, stealing a license plate from a car in Moriarity, New Mexico, on their way east.
Unbeknownst to them, their fellow escapee who stole the getaway car, had gotten into a shootout with a Garfield County sheriff's deputy and City of Rifle police, and spilled the beans on his erstwhile companions.
He is now doing 60 years for that shootout, at Colorado taxpayers' expense.
The three remaining fugitives heard news of his capture and squealing on them on the radio as they were going through Texas. Knowing their plans had been revealed, they quickly reversed direction. When they arrived at the New Mexico I-40 welcome station, they picked up maps and then noticed a couple who were pulling an RV with a crew cab pickup. They approached them and warned the driver not to go for one of his many handguns that was within reach.
That, unfortunately, sealed the fate of the hapless couple who were kidnapped.

Now a two-car convoy, they continued, going west toward Santa Rosa, when they were ordered to pull off on a frontage road. They were forced back into their trailer, allegedly by the ringleader, while the lifer drove the pickup and his girl friend followed in the beat up grey sedan they had bought in Arizona.

According to his indictment, the ringleader shot the couple, then when the truck stopped for gas, they noticed that the victims' blood was pouring out of the trailer onto the ground. They sped off, then exited to an unpaved country road, where the trailer was unhitched, splashed with liquor and set afire.

Eventually, the lifer, intent on suicide, changed his mind, going to a church in Meetetse, Wyoming and singing with the congregation. The minister gave him a jacket and $40 for mowing the church lawn, and he cadged a motel room floor to spend the night. The next morning, after a church member saw his picture on TV news and called police, he was captured while hitchhiking to Casper.
The fleeing couple had already gone on to Billings, Montana, then to Gentry, Arkansas, a week later. There they held up a beauty salon, but thanks to law enforcement dithering, the pair continued on their nationwide flight.

A week after that, they were spotted by an alert forest service employee at a campground and a swat team descended upon them to capture the pair.

Now the federal government is prosecuting the ringleader, hoping to get a death penalty conviction from a jury that will have to endure a four month trial. Federal, Arizona and New Mexican taxpayers will be footing the bill for millions for this search, apprehension, Arizona and New Mexico trials, and continued imprisonment.

McCluskey, being 48 years old, suicidal and in poor health, is not likely to ever be executed. There have only been three federal executions in the last 50 years and three Virginians have been on death row for over 20 years. Appeals of death sentences cost the public fortunes.

If McCluskey makes it that far, he will join Sherman Lamont Fields, who promised a bribe to a Texas for-profit prison guard in exchange for a key to his prison, escaped and promptly kidnapped and murdered his ex-girl friend.

The U.S. Attorney who decided to seek the death penalty, Kenneth J. Gonzales, was perhaps awarded a federal judgeship for this sort of grandstanding, and was sworn in last week.

Unfortunately, no one seems to be really talking about the whole picture.

Somewhere, just as they did in Kansas five to ten years ago, corrupt officials are no doubt meeting with industry executives and cooking up more plans to expand their leaky, for-profit American gulag.

Who will tell the people?

Recovery Matters

 

Everybody needs to recover something in their life at one time or another. Every person has a different recovery to make. Some have lost relationships, some their health and some their confidence in themselves or others. The fact you have recovered yourself matters. It matters so much that one has to dwell on its importance in order to understand the concept completely.  Whatever it was you had lost is always there to reclaim unless you are not aware of what it was you have lost. Recovery is more than just rebounding or reconnecting with yourself or others. It’s about identifying what you are made of and what you can or cannot handle in life.

 It’s about survival and the ability to overcome and adapt on matters close to you and important to you as well. It’s about healing the mind, body and spirit back to the point where it can again endure life’s pressures and stressors while effectively deal with the stimulus that causes such stress around you.

Thinking about the process we must determine it what we believe to be a recovery process is fact or fiction. Is it the truth in regards to plausible evidence or is it with utter suspicions that it may not be possible at all? Is there a reality involved or is it just a perception. Are we interpreting things like we want them to be or how they actually are? The answer is to look at every angle and determine just how effectively we can recover what we lost and how much we got back from our efforts to attain such a reclamation process successfully.

The act of recovery is an action needed to restore a balance of systems within your body, your mind and your spirit. What happens if you don’t do this right? One can apply even more stress than there was before you started this journey to recovery. Failing to identify your goals and your purposes is detrimental to your success and may make your recovery only partial which may impact your confidence or realization.

One must be cognizant that if one is to completely recover, one has to replace the energy and effort spent during this process with added efforts and energy than ever before in your life. Doing it wrong will cause a breakdown either psychologically or physiologically and create more stress and anxiety thus there is a certain determination level of commitment that must be made before you being the process.

You must be prepared to be worn down, exposed to other risks or injuries and replace what you lost with more sweat and tears. Your mind should be focused on your resilience towards adversity, your need to rehydrate your body and in all cases, protect your immunity to other influences or powers that can impact your strength politically, physically and psychologically. Thus you must bring about an attitude that nothing is going to deter you of reaching your goals and nothing will stop you until your work is done completing this challenge to recover whatever you may have lost.

The more of a recovery you make, the better you will feel. Don’t be fooled by false securities or sensations and quit or lower your energy prematurely. Resist the temptation to ease off and keep the pressure on yourself to keep on going. The more you recover the further the gains made. Being productive and vigorous is the key to success. Try not to compensate for the pain but endure it. There must be pain associated with the recovery. It keeps your mind focused on why you are doing this to begin with and keeps you from slowing down or stopping completely short of your goals.

Trust yourself and trust your instincts to stay on track. You will reap the rewards as your recovery gains the momentum you know you can attain and soars you to your desired level of your plan. Become a believer and strengthen your confidence to accomplish anything you set out to do even when you may have lost that strength for a moment in your life but you decided to fight and get it back. In the end you will be stronger, smarter, more balanced and effectually healed to face the world with the energy and spirit that brought you success.

 

Corrections - Corruptive to the Core

Corrections - Corruptive to the Core

 

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that Arizona prisons are falling apart. The attention to detail required to keep them running in good order has been appalling to say the least. In fact, there are only two benefactors for the condition it is in and that is a beneficent private prison industry and the inmates that are running the asylums statewide.  The Governor has obviously decided to allow what has been designed to be a corruptive machine to exist while she is in office and allowing nature to take its course as the impotent system devours human lives, and preys on the weak as an abundance of drugs, contraband and disruptive groups grow rampant without any intentions of control by the agency.

Government employee unions have grown impotent as well living parasitically on the unwary and less deserving full time contributors to their funds. The unions, all of them assimilate the features of a house of cards are ready to fall within an earshot of the director’s anger as they are targeted the main political asses. Let the truth be known, the prison system failed a long time ago. The current regime, in a reckless and almost unlimited fashion shaped their strategies for complete failures and proactively pursued an alternative that would give more funding and more control to the private prison industry. You might say that they bailed out a stagnant prison industry by offering them revitalized growth through subsidies and contractual promises.

For the corrections employees it has been an understandable minefield to tread very carefully and with caution. The current administration has haphazardly put more violence and less control on the grounds with their sparsely designed staffing patterns and buckling under the pressure to cut back even more resources than before. It has certainly become a circus atmosphere if were not for the serious injuries incurred by faithful employees put at risk and buckling under the weight of being outnumbered at least 200 to 1 at times when on the yard.

These cumulative follies are anticipated to continue to occur as the public has ignored these flaws with apathy and disinterest. The administration has been assured of one thing for sure by the Governor and the majority rule in the legislature as they carry the sign that states “where there is no admittance of failures or shortcomings, there are no penalties for failures” as failures are allowed to proliferate at a record rate with humans dying along the way.

Meanwhile the system is decaying and troubled and when public safety or trust is breached there will be an outcry from those that behaved ignorant of their surroundings and blame individuals rather than systems for the liabilities found. Leaders in the government will point fingers and deny culpability as they hustle to cover up their tracks for endorsing such behaviors tacitly and silently behind closed doors.  Jeopardizing every element of a democracy they impose jurisdiction with promises to fix the problem as heads will roll for those that did exactly what they were told to do by politicians in the pockets of lobbyist and the governor’s corner office.

Sometime soon, among the exculpatory alibis invoked to deflect blame from the political class and the docile politicians who empowered it, is the myth that this prison system is simply a victim of "lack of oversight” and that the solution is to simply remove the current administration with a new one that is in tune with the political machine’s wishes and demands even though it may be exactly a replica of what was in place before but given a new name, a new mission statement and the same deliberate strategies to continue on its journey of failures and corruptive practices. Time for change but change might never come unless we elect new leadership to steer us in the right direction.