A former police chief and convicted killer was mistakenly classified as a medium-risk prisoner for five to six years by an automatic inmate classification system, Arkansas Division of Correction Director Dexter Payne told a congressional hearing Monday.
Payne told the Charitable, Penal and Correctional Institutions subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council that Grant Hardin, a convicted rapist and murderer who was formerly a small-town police chief and a state prison guard, should have been classified as high-risk but was not.
On May 25, 56-year-old Hardin broke out of the North Central Unit at Calico Rock. According to Payne, Hardin ought to have been detained in a facility with more security. After being apprehended on June 6, he was moved to the Varner SuperMax Unit close to Gould.
According to Payne, he shouldn’t have been at Calico Rock without an override.
During a prior committee meeting, other prison officials informed members that the North Central Unit contained both medium-risk detainees and some serious felons.
According to Payne, in order to make sure that the risk assessments in the system are accurate, the division’s classification office is required to examine inmate classifications at least once a year.
According to Payne, the score is determined by the system. The warden, the deputy director, or I would have to overrule that in order to keep a prisoner who had a score that classified them as a high-security prisoner at a medium-security facility like Calico Rock.
Hardin was employed in the prison kitchen when he made his escape from Calico Rock. He broke prison policy when a kitchen manager permitted him to enter the loading dock unattended. Hardin created the appearance of a guard’s uniform by using a marker to shade a white prison outfit black. Without confirming Hardin’s identity, a tower guard let him leave the prison through the rear gate.
Local, state, and federal law enforcement launched a manhunt when he escaped. Less than two miles from the prison, he was discovered by searchers concealed in thick forest.
Following the escape, Payne said, corrections officials quickly fired the guard and the kitchen manager. He defended such dismissals in a statement to lawmakers on Monday. He said that other workers had been demoted or punished for the same infractions that allowed Hardin to evade punishment.
Payne stated that additional searches of the prison’s outdoor spaces and back dock would be carried out in the future. The correction division also changed their procedure for opening gates to prevent a similar mistake from happening in the future, he said.
At this facility, I believe that’s where we’ve failed. “They probably would have discovered that [Hardin] was hiding items out there, but they didn’t search the back dock area enough,” Payne said.
Rep. Howard Beaty, Jr., R-Crossett, co-chair of the subcommittee, chastised Payne and department employees for failing to assume greater accountability for the jail break.
According to Beaty, I bear some of the responsibility when my staff malfunctions or fails to carry out the directives and plans I have provided.
Payne answered, “I am the one in front of you today because I am generally responsible.”
Payne stated that they were still unsure when Rep. Justin Gonzales, R-Okolona, inquired as to whether someone in the department had entered something erroneously into the system, causing the incorrect classification.
He remarked, “We don’t yet know how it didn’t calculate the score correctly.”
According to him, they anticipated learning that more prisoners had been misclassified.
In his assessment of the situation, Sen. Ben Gilmore, R-Crossett, expressed dissatisfaction with the issues that remain over how Hardin escaped.
There are two possible outcomes. And those two things are that, while it is true that some people did not perform their duties, there should be safeguards in place to make sure that they do. Those checks and balances—where are they? “Gilmore said.” I know what the answer is going to be, and respectfully sir, I just don t think that cuts it for me.
Gilmore claimed that supervision was necessary and that he was still perplexed by how Hardin managed to get the markers to dye the outfit. Gilmore noted that there were outstanding questions like that that needed to be addressed.
I don’t know. Gilmore remarked, “I don’t think you can even explain that, because you didn’t last time.”
Hardin was found guilty of rape and murder and given an 80-year sentence. In 2017, he was found guilty of killing a man in Gateway and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After his DNA was found to match a 20-year-old cold case, he subsequently entered a guilty plea to two charges of rape in 2019 and received a further 50-year prison sentence.
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