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Minimum security, high concerns The Boston Globe

14.11.11

But it wasn’t until a gang-connected inmate, Tamik Kirkland, escaped and allegedly went on a shooting spree inside a Springfield barbershop last April, leaving one man dead, that the full risk of minimum-security prisons became clear.

The escape has raised questions about whether inmates such as Kirkland, an aspiring rapper serving a 2 1/2-to-4-year sentence on gun charges related to a 2008 murder attempt, should be housed in a prison without walls. At a minimum, many questioned why it was so easy for Kirkland to slip out an unbarred window and into the night undetected.

“If he wasn’t able to walk away so easily, that violence would have never taken place,’’ said Sergeant John Delaney of the Springfield Police Department. “It would have saved the city of Springfield a lot of heartache.’’

All but two of the 73 prisoners who have escaped from Massachusetts prisons since 2000 have come from similar facilities that lack fences or walls around the perimeter, even though they hold fewer than 15 percent of all state inmates. Twenty escapees remain at large, and at least four others were accused of new crimes while they were free, Department of Correction records show.

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