More Than 100 Inmates Moved From Kingman Prison to State-Run Facilities Following Escape

More than 100 inmates previously housed at Arizona’s privately-run Kingman Prison have been moved to state-run digs thanks to the three inmates who escaped from the prison last month.

The Arizona Department of Corrections released its report on the escape this morning. It found several security problems with the facility, which resulted in the moving of 148 inmates.

DOC spokesman Barrett Marson tells New Times the inmates who were moved are those who have either been convicted of murder, attempted murder, or who have tried to escape at some point in the last 10 years.

The inmates’ security levels won’t change — for example, medium-security inmates will still be housed in medium-security prisons. Those prisons, however, will be prisons run by the state, not privately-run facilities like Kingman.

The move comes as criticism mounts over whether Utah-based Management & Training Corp., the company that runs the Kingman prison, are up for the task of detaining serious criminals.

Two of the three men who escaped from the medium-security prison on June 30 were convicted murderers. The other wasn’t a murderer, but not for lack of trying. John McCluskey, the only inmate still on the loose, was serving a 15-year sentence for attempted murder.

McCluskey and his fiance/ cousin have been linked to the murder of an Oklahoma couple on vacation in New Mexico. It’s fair to assume the couple would still be alive today if McCluskey had never escaped.

The report points out several security flaws at the Kingman prison that weren’t detected during routine audits, including several false alarms, which it seems caused corrections officers to not take the alarm as seriously as they should have.

Check out the full report here.