How many times have we been told that "prison will keep us as safe as the death penalty"?  The people who say this are well aware of (indeed they're obsessed with) the fact that the judicial system is fallible  --  but apparently oblivious to the fact that the penal system is also fallible.

Hence today's story of the capture and arrest of an escaped killer, from which I excerpt the following tidbits about prison security:

 

The prison has a badly defective alarm system, a perimeter post was unstaffed, an outside dormitory door had been propped open with a rock and the alarms went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them, the report said. Also, operational practices often led to a gap of 15 minutes or longer during shift changes along the perimeter fence, Ryan said.

Prison staff told a review team that the dormitory door was left open because of the heavy amount of foot traffic. That open door allowed the three inmates to reach a 10-foot chain-linked fence that hadn't been topped with razor wire. They scaled that fence and hid out for a time behind a building in an area that isn't visible to staff from the yard.

 

While on the lam, the convict and an accomplice apparently killed two other people, Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla.

How easy it is for academics and defense lawyers to talk about the supposed safety of incarcerating killers when they full well know that it will be other people who wind up paying the price for their deceit.