Breakin' Free

After spending the past two days reviewing the various FAILs on failblog.org, I decided to pop on over to CNN.com to see what was going on in the news. It turns out that there's yet ANOTHER story of ANOTHER escaped inmate. Yeah. Seriously. Just in the past few days alone, we had:

1) Robert Maday- the Chicagoland career offender was being transported by police when he escaped, which led to a two-day manhunt (and lockdowns of area schools). He was fortunately apprehended later, but only after he hijacked some cars and robbed a bank! http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-escaped-prisoner-18-sep18,0,3482719.story

2) On Friday, in Washington, legally insane killer Phillip Paul was able to elude law enforcement when he escaped during -- get ready for this -- an outing to the county fair! YES! He's a convicted, legally insane murderer and was on a fun little trip to a fair!!!! I'm ashamed of one of my former home states. And guess what? He's still missing! http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/19/washington.escaped.killer/index.html?iref=newssearch

3) And then this morning we have the lovely and talented Joshua Barnes, age 21, who was serving a 35 year sentence for a hodge-podge of offenses, missing from a Texas jail after he broke through a wall and used bedsheets to propel down the side of a seven-story building. ?!? And no one saw or heard this? WTF?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/20/texas.prisoner.escape/

I mean, at the end of the day, I'm very supportive and appreciative of those who work in law enforcement, and generally have respect for what they do. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder how stuff like this happens. Clearly these people received training in how to transport prisoners. There have to be policies and procedures. So.... what happened? The only explanation is that someone didn't follow policies or procedures, or was lax in carrying out their duties such that a "mistake" happened. Now, I don't know what happened in these three situations, but it brings to mind a concern of mine, which is that a lot of people get too comfortable at their jobs which makes it easy to be lazy and/or disregard standard practices, which results in costly mistakes for the employer (and others, as well). Let me digress for a minute.

Our country is allegedly still in the throes of a nasty recession wherein jobs are being discarded left and right and good employees are finding themselves jobless and unable to replace their former jobs. There are people (like one of my sisters and friends, for example) who send out probably on average 50 resumes per week to all types of employers, and even look for jobs in other parts of the country. They're so eager to return to work and just be back in the game that they're lowering their standards and forgetting about advanced training and degrees and promising would-be-employers that no, they're not overqualified, and just give them a chance.

Compare this to those employees (not all, just some) who have become complacent in their duties to the point where laziness and lack of attention lead to mistakes. Look around your workplace. I'm sure you'll recognize these people. So I ask, why do employers keep these people on? Is it out of loyalty? Because it's easier to NOT fire someone? Because it's cheaper to NOT have to hire someone new and train them? In the end, aren't people who fail to comply with standard policies and practices the ones that cause the problems which bring about costly mistakes? So why not get them "off the bus" and bring aboard new talent, eager for the job, the paycheck, the return to normalcy.

I know, I got off topic a bit there, but after hanging out with various peeps over the past few weeks and hearing drama about all sorts of random things happening at various workplaces, I can't help but wonder about it. Then, reading these stories about the escapees kind of triggered those thoughts again. Who knows. I try to be a "rule follower" but we all slip from time to time. I guess I would just have thought that the transportation of highly dangerous criminal offenders would be something that involves standard protocol, tested over time to avoid careless errors like those that may have happened here. I guess we'll see. In the meantime, I'm thankful for our law enforcement for their efforts to locate and apprehend these criminals and to hep restore safety and security to those communities.