Consultant issues report on escape

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A consulting firm says the Pennsylvania jail where an inmate escaped before allegedly killing a woman had poor morale and training and a warden who wasn’t respected by staff. 


And among the staff, the report said, was a guard who was nodding off instead of monitoring security cameras on the morning of the escape.

The report by CSI Corporate Security says Robert Crissman was wrongly given a job that enabled him to leave the jail to retrieve breakfast trays for inmates. That’s when he escaped from the Armstrong County Jail on July 30. 

The report says Crissman, a heroin user, was still in drug withdrawal and shouldn’t have been in the trusted inmate program.

The Armstrong County Prison Board paid $15,000 for the report. It says despite the findings, no guards “should be held responsible or be blamed” for the escape.