Tyrone Conn's escape from Kingston Penitentiary : Cancrime

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A decade ago, Canada's federal prison service was humiliated when a wily bank robber clambered over the 10-metre high stone wall of the country's oldest, seemingly most secure penitentiary, and vanished into the darkness, leaving behind cheering sex killers and pedophiles who were his prison mates. The conditions in which that escape was possible exist again today at some of the country's highest security prisons.

Tyrone Conn (above) was 32 years old, serving a 47-year prison sentence at maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary when he staged a spectacular escape on May 7, 1999. His cunning, patience and ingenuity, coupled with a series of stunning security failures, made the breakout from the Bighouse possible (use the interactive aerial view of Kingston Pen above to understand the escape). Conn was the first prisoner to make it over the wall of Kingston Pen in 41 years. He scampered over the east wall sometime between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., using a ladder he jury-rigged to greater height and a 42-foot length of canvas strapping and grappling hook he fashioned from a piece of steel rebar. The nearest guard tower, a squat observation post at the southeast corner of the prison, had been empty since 11 p.m. the night before. Had a guard been on duty, he or she likely would have had a clear view of the escape in progress, and, armed with a rifle, would have been equipped to stop it. The tower had been unstaffed on the overnight shift for several years, a victim of management budget cuts, despite the protests of prison staff. After the escape, prison managers reinstated 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week staffing of four perimeter watch towers at Kingston Pen, a prison that holds psychopathic sex killers like Paul Bernardo. Conn's escape also was successful because two inmate accomplices on his cellblock spent the evening of May 6 moving a dummy in and out of his cell bunk before regular head counts. At the time, Conn was hidden in a canvas shop, assembling his escape gear. The dummy wasn't discovered until after 7 a.m., when a search of the prison was ordered after a staff member arriving for work noticed the canvas strapping dangling from the outside of the east wall.

There are eight perimeter observation towers at maximum-security Millhaven Institution, just west of Kingston, Ontario. The Haven holds some of the country's toughest bikers, gang members and contract killers. Just one of the eight towers is staffed on the overnight shift from 11 to 7. Recently, managers at the prison reduced the number of armed security patrols around the perimeter of the prison from two to one. The patrols were conducted by a guard in a truck with an automatic rifle and a handgun, who remains in constant contact with a central command post that monitors video cameras and motion detectors. The cut was made over the protests of prison workers (more on the staffing controversy in my Whig-Standard account of the Conn escape).

At medium-security Collins Bay Institution in Kingston, which also houses bank robbers and murderers, none of the four corner guard towers is staffed on the overnight shift from 11 to 7.

Similar conditions exist at many federal prisons across the country, following the Correctional Service's implementation of a new staffing model April 1, over the objections of front-line prison workers. Staff say security has been sacrificed by penny-pinching bosses.

Ty Conn's breakout was embarrassing for senior Corrections officials, who deserved much of the blame for fostering a culture at Kingston Pen that made the escape possible, front-line staff say. The internal inquiry into Conn's escape and the resulting report (reproduced below in full)documents dozens of security failures at the prison. Many prison workers insist that the final report was a whitewash, meant to protect prison managers and senior Corrections staff. It chronicles the genius of Conn's escape plot. It does not address one lingering question – who helped him? Police who investigated the escape are nearly certain that an accomplice in a car was waiting outside the prison in a nearby neighbourhood to spirit Conn quickly out of Kingston. That person has never been identified.

Conn died, of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, roughly two weeks after his escape.