Audit of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Processes and Procedures for Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to Escapes Fact Sheet

Amarik K. Singh OIG OFFICE of the Inspector General INSPECTOR GENERAL Neil Robertson Chief Deputy Inspector General Summary Fact Sheet Independent November 21, 2024 Prison Oversight Audit of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Processes and Procedures for Preventing, Detecting, and Responding to Escapes (Audit Report № 23–02, November 2024) In this audit, we evaluated the department’s policies In addition, each prison and conservation camp is and processes for preventing, detecting, and required to have an escape pursuit plan that must be immediately responding to escapes. We reviewed updated annually. Escape pursuit plans are initiated by escapes that occurred from January 1, 2022, through prisons and conservation camps when an incarcerated December 31, 2023, from minimum-support facilities person is discovered missing. and conservation camps—the only locations with reported escapes during the audit period. Our audit After every escape, staff must prepare an after-action did not include a review of escapes or attempted report summarizing the incident and detailing a escapes from community reentry programs. timeline of key events that occurred both before and after the escape. After-action reports also identify deficiencies that contributed to the escape and Background recommend specific actions to correct the deficiencies. One of the department’s primary objectives is to protect the public by maintaining physical custody of In total, from 2019 through 2023, one incarcerated incarcerated people. Incarcerated people are not in person escaped from a secure prison facility, while 50 the department’s physical custody when they escape. incarcerated people escaped from either a minimum- Incarcerated people are guilty of escape if, without support facility or a conservation camp. Although the lawful authority, they remove or attempt to remove number of escapes is relatively low, the department themselves from official confinement. must take every precaution to prevent escapes and to protect the safety and security of prisons, prison staff, When incarcerated people are taken into departmental incarcerated people, and the public. The risks and custody, they undergo a classification process to consequences of just one escape can be severe and establish where they will be housed. Staff use a tragic, resulting in injury and harm to prison staff and placement score, in conjunction with escape history the public. and other case factors (administrative determinants), to house the person in either a secure or The Department Can Improve Its Policies and nonsecure facility. Procedures to Ensure That Established Protocols Secure facilities generally have multiple physical Are Followed to Prevent, Promptly Detect, and barriers and checkpoints, such as sallyports and gates, Respond to Escapes which confine incarcerated people and restrict their In our review of 12 of 25 escapes that occurred from movement within facilities. Conversely, nonsecure January 1, 2022, through December 31, 2023, we found facilities generally do not restrict movement and that count procedures were effective in detecting include fewer physical barriers. missing incarcerated people and initiating emergency counts to confirm escapes. Moreover, departmental Departmental regulations and guidelines include staff conducted the required searches of housing and measures that may deter and prevent escapes. These yard areas after escapes were suspected. However, measures include conducting physical counts to track staff did not always follow departmental policy and and account for incarcerated people. The department’s procedures when carrying out the escape pursuit plan. Design and Construction Standards: Design Criteria Guidelines (design guidelines) also require security We found several instances in which prisons or fences and walls, based on the security level of the conservation camps did not follow the required facility. Most prisons that currently operate minimum- sequence of escape pursuit activities. For example, support facilities include fencing with razor or barbed incident commanders failed to notify designated wire. In contrast, most conservation camps do not departmental units of escapes, assign additional have physical fences. central control staff to pursue the escapee, retrieve Page 1 of 4 10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827 5 Telephone: (916) 288-4233 5 www.oig.ca.gov Amarik K. Singh OIG OFFICE of the Inspector General INSPECTOR GENERAL Neil Robertson Chief Deputy Inspector General Summary Fact Sheet Independent November 21, 2024 Prison Oversight and review escapees’ records, or notify escapees’ In one instance, the incident commander’s contact documented victims. information was missing from an initial press release issued after an escape. Because the incident commander’s contact information was missing from After-Action Reports Are Not Written After All the press release, the incident commander did not Escapes as Required by Departmental Guidelines receive timely information regarding a sighting of and Policy the escapee, and law enforcement units were not Departmental staff provided us with vague immediately dispatched. According to the department, and contradictory explanations regarding the staff who were responsible for issuing the incomplete circumstances under which after-action reports press release received training, but the department are required after an escape. During our review, neither provided proof of training nor training departmental managers stated that after-action reports memoranda to support the statement. had not been completed for seven escapes. When we made numerous requests for clarification as to why the After another escape, a manager recommended reports were not prepared, a departmental manager corrective action to address deficiencies identified in stated that departmental policy does not require staff reports, in communication among staff, and in after-action reports for all escapes, and that policy monitoring a conservation camp’s telephone system. supersedes the guidelines that require after- Although the department provided a participation action reports. sheet as evidence that staff had attended training after the escape, it did not include any information about We requested that the department provide us with the training topic, the individuals who attended, or the after-action reports for three escapes we had selected date the training was provided. Therefore, we found for substantive testing. After informing us multiple no evidence that staff at the conservation camp had times that those reports did not exist, the department carried out the corrective action recommended in the ultimately provided the reports 49 days after we had after-action report. initially requested them. However, none of the three reports document that they had been submitted Finally, a manager from a conservation camp jointly to departmental executives for review or approval, operated with the California Department of Forestry and the department could not confirm whether and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) recommended management had reviewed them. Furthermore, the corrective action after identifying errors in reports, department could not provide the date on which one of deficiencies in the inventory of vehicles used at the the three after-action reports had been prepared. camp, and delayed telematics reporting from a stolen CAL FIRE vehicle used in an escape. If staff do not comply with existing policy to complete after-action reports, the department cannot effectively The conservation camp took corrective action after monitor staff’s compliance with procedures to prevent the escape by requiring staff to attend additional and respond to escapes, provide guidance, or revise training and by implementing measures to control polices to address escape risks and the inventory of vehicles; however, it did not address improve operations. the inability to promptly access telematics reporting from the CAL FIRE vehicle. When we asked why this The Department Does Not Always deficiency was not addressed, the department stated the following: Adequately Oversee Facilities’ Responses to Escapes in Order to Identify and Correct CDCR has zero access or any point of Security Weaknesses contact for CAL FIRE telematics after We found that the department did not always hours. This is a CAL FIRE issue and will require deficiencies identified during escapes to be need to [sic] handled at a higher level corrected. Managers recommended specific actions to streamline this process between to correct deficiencies related to six of the 12 escapes CDCR and CAL FIRE. It cannot be we reviewed. However, we found that the managers’ handled at the local level and camps recommendations were not implemented in three of have no control over this issue. the six cases. Page 2 of 4 10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827 5 Telephone: (916) 288-4233 5 www.oig.ca.gov Amarik K. Singh OIG OFFICE of the Inspector General INSPECTOR GENERAL Neil Robertson Chief Deputy Inspector General Summary Fact Sheet Independent November 21, 2024 Prison Oversight Because conservation camps are jointly operated manual tracking system that is maintained outside by the department and CAL FIRE, other CAL FIRE of SOMS. vehicles could be commandeered during escapes. Therefore, the department should have immediately When a prison or conservation camp requests communicated with CAL FIRE to ensure that the GPS assistance from OCS to respond to an escape, and tracking system is always enabled for all its vehicles OCS staff are deployed, a special agent in that office used at conservation camps. Because the department generates a case number and manually logs the failed to address this known weakness, its ability to incident in its records. If OCS is not contacted or OCS promptly track escapees continues to be impaired. staff are not deployed, the escape is not documented on its escape logs. The Department Does Not Have a Central Source Because the department did not provide the of Data for Tracking and Monitoring Escapes information we had requested from SOMS, we were We found inconsistencies between the escape data unable to reconcile the two data sources to verify the department had publicly reported and the data that the escape statistics the department had publicly it provided for this audit, in part because there is reported were accurate. However, we reconciled the no central location or source where escapes and department’s 2022 and 2023 OCS escape logs to the attempted escapes are tracked and monitored. after-action reports the department had provided and identified four escapes in 2023 that had not been According to departmental management, all escape included in OCS escape logs. data is tracked in its Strategic Offender Management System (SOMS), one of its electronic databases. The Figure 1 below shows the discrepancy in the number department, therefore, pulls data from SOMS to of escapes the department publicly reported and the publicly report escape statistics. However, the escape number of escapes documented in the department’s data provided to us during this audit came from the Office of Correctional Safety escape logs. Office of Correctional Safety’s (OCS) escape logs, a Figure 1. Discrepancies in the Department’s Reporting of Incarcerated Person Escapes in 2022 and 2023 14 14% discrepancy 13 (2 escapes) 12 31% discrepancy (4 escapes) 9 2022 2023 Reported OCS Reported OCS Publicly Escape Logs Publicly Escape Logs Note: OCS stands for the Office of Correctional Safety. Source: Departmental COMPSTAT reports and OCS escape logs for the period from January 1, 2022, through December 31, 2023. Page 3 of 4 10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827 5 Telephone: (916) 288-4233 5 www.oig.ca.gov Amarik K. Singh OIG OFFICE of the Inspector General INSPECTOR GENERAL Neil Robertson Chief Deputy Inspector General Summary Fact Sheet Independent November 21, 2024 Prison Oversight Recommendations The Department Does Not Always Adequately Oversee Facilities’ Responses to Escapes in Order to Identify and The Department Can Improve Its Policies and Procedures Correct Security Weaknesses to Ensure That Established Protocols are Followed to • The department should clarify or, if necessary, Prevent, Promptly Detect, and Respond to Escapes develop and implement policies and • The department should ensure that after- procedures to ensure that corrective action is action reports are prepared after all escapes. taken to address all issues identified in after- action reports written in response to escapes. • The department should require staff to The Department Does Not Have a Central Source of Data document the staff member who prepared for Tracking and Monitoring Escapes each after-action report and the date each report was prepared. • The department should develop a central tracking system to collect and report all • The department should require designated escapes and attempted escapes. The tracking managers to document that they reviewed and protocols should include reporting all approved the after-action reports. incidents—not only those for which OCS is notified or when OCS staff are deployed. Page 4 of 4 10111 Old Placerville Road, Suite 110, Sacramento, California 95827 5 Telephone: (916) 288-4233 5 www.oig.ca.gov