Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Friday that he plans to meet with the head of the Arkansas Department of Correction about an investigation of a convicted murderer's escape from a work site near an east Arkansas prison.
The vice chairman of the state House Judiciary Committee also said Friday that a department policy that allowed such an inmate to work outside the prison without handcuffs or shackles was "an extreme failure."
"This individual was convicted of some serious and heinous crimes. That he was even considered [for such work] to me was an egregious failure," said Rep. Marshall Wright, D-Forrest City.
Wright said he had been told by people involved in the search that one armed guard was supervising about 35 inmates when Lloyd Jones, 40, escaped from the work detail near the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Brickeys, a Lee County community near Marianna. Jones was missing for about an hour before his absence was noticed.
Searchers captured Jones about three miles from the prison and about five miles from the work site Thursday afternoon.
Convicted in 2012 of murdering a 16-year-old girl and previously convicted of rape, Jones had an inmate classification that allowed him to work unshackled outside the prison as long as he was under armed guard, department spokesman Solomon Graves has said. After the escape, the department changed Jones' classification to the strictest and moved him to a maximum-security unit in Tucker.
Hutchinson, talking with reporters in Little Rock, said he and the Correction Department's director, Wendy Kelley, would meet next week. J.R. Davis, the governor's spokesman, said he did not have information on what day the meeting would take place.
Hutchinson said he knows that Kelley will "be reviewing [the escape] to see what lessons can be learned."
"Did we fail to follow policy at any point?" the governor said. "Do we need to correct policy? Certainly, we want to learn from this."
"We're going to see if there's any changes needed in policy or whether this was any break in policy," he added. "We're going to review it, so I don't want to make any comments beyond that."
Wright said he has discussed his concerns with representatives of the governor's office.
"They seem to be very much concerned and on top of it," said Wright, who said his House district borders the one that includes the prison.
"If [Jones] was under any sort of classification to be outside of prison walls without any sort of shackle, that is just an extreme failure," Wright said. "This individual was convicted of some serious and heinous crimes. That that was even considered, to me, was an egregious failure.
"If there has been a failure this bad on something like this, what else is being missed? What else is going on with inmates or classifications? That's something we have to find out about."
Wright said he thought the Correction Department should take some emergency steps "to prevent this happening" again while its internal investigation is underway.
Graves said the department's internal review was in its first full day and added, "Director Kelley is going to let that process run its course before making any decisions related [to] policy or procedural changes."
Wright said he believes the House Judiciary Committee "at some point will absolutely take" the prison issue up. He said he would work closely with the panel's chairman, Rep. Matthew Shepherd, on the matter.
Shepherd, R-El Dorado, said he would want to know more about Jones' prison file before commenting on whether Jones' inmate classification was appropriate.
But Shepherd said the state also needs "to revisit these policies or procedures" that allowed Jones to work outside the prison even though Jones had been convicted of murder.
Shepherd said he wasn't sure if there would be a formal Judiciary Committee meeting or if interested lawmakers would just look into the situation on their own.
"If there is some type of systemic issue, there may be a need for ... a committee meeting," he said.
Jones, who lived near Lavaca in Sebastian County, pleaded guilty in August 2012 to first-degree murder in the death of Angela Allen of Van Buren. He also was convicted of abuse of a corpse and possession of material depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child. Police said he killed the girl, stuffed her body into a barrel and buried her.
He was sentenced to prison as a habitual offender, meaning he was ordered to serve the entire sentence.
State Desk on 06/18/2016