JAILBREAK 1984- 6 deathrow inmates escape...and the Supermax's that resulted from it

This PDF is a graphic of the steps of the actual escape
http://static.mgnetwork.com/rtd/pdfs/20090531_briley.pdf

LONG article but very interesting. The Briley brothers were notorious here in Richmond.

The state of prisons at the time is shocking to us today:
the article lays blame to "prisoner rights" movement (and there is some there)
the article mentions but doesn't lay blame on clearly lacking management at every level

The result of this were two fold:
the old system of jails was done. Supermax prisons were to be the norm and the rise of the prison industry was as well.
George Allen ran basically on the fears (reasonable) of the community, got elected, and ended parole.

Very interesting read
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Seven years later -- on May 31, 1984 -- the largest escape of condemned prisoners in U.S. history unleashed itself from Mecklenburg's death row.

Planned for years and secretly revealed in advance to prison officials by worried inmates, the escape exposed a prison environment dominated by a band of convicts, not their keepers.

Stockton's diary revealed the stunning mix of circumstances that helped fuel the escape, details later picked up in hundreds of pages of post-escape formal investigations.

The breakout hinged on bad habits and poor design:

* Some guards responsible for the control room that maintained access to death row's cells would open the control-room door if an inmate wanted to pass an item to someone in another section of the two-story cell block, known as the "C" pod, in Building 1.

* A bathroom door, sometimes unlocked, adjoined the control-room area, meaning that prisoners who filed in or out of the tier could duck into the bathroom unnoticed at times.

* If inmates returning from recreation weren't ordered to go directly to their cells, it was easy to create confusion over head counts while they milled about, chatted or darted from one cell to another.

* The prison's five matched buildings were full of stairwell hiding places, blocked lines of sight and prison-yard obstructions. Its design, once hailed as state-of-the-art, was described after the escape by politicians and experts alike as archaic.

Six death-row inmates, each one a heartless killer dressed in riot gear, burst through the door of Building 1 with a wheeled stretcher. They yelled they had a bomb; two of the men were hosing it off with a fire extinguisher, supposedly to cool the explosive.

The bomb, under a blanket, was the television set from death row.

The two Briley brothers, Clanton, Peterson, Tuggle and Richmonder Willie Leroy Jones were free.

There had been no bloodshed, no gunfire. A prison van loaded with a TV set and six murderers rolled toward North Carolina. They had $758 in cash taken from guards, plenty of clothes and hundreds of marijuana cigarettes.

It was 10:47 p.m.

State police were told at 11:31 p.m. -- not by the prison but by the Mecklenburg County sheriff's office.

"It was 1:30 or 2 a.m. in the morning and I can remember being pretty upset that all this time had apparently gone by before the word went up the chain of command or whatever and got to me," Robb said last week.

LINK
Jailbreak: Briley brothers busted out of death row
http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/crime/article/BRIL31_20090530-221016/270957/

here it is so you don't have to scroll back through the post

http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/crime/article/BRIL31_20090530-221016/270957/

Black men started wearing t-shirts that said, "I am not Linwood Briley."

Found 'em in South Philly.