(CNN)The murder defendant who escaped from an Alabama detention center with a corrections official on April 29 had previous experience trying to escape prison and winning the trust of his captors.

Casey White, 38, was seen on surveillance camera in an orange jumpsuit and shackles being led into a patrol car by Vicky White, 56, a corrections official.

She had told her bosses and co-workers she was taking him to court for a mental health evaluation, but authorities soon discovered there was no evaluation or hearing scheduled that day.

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” – Classic line in the movie “Cool Hand Luke,” about a convict returned after escaping from prison  

The duo ditched the patrol car and fled the state in another vehicle. On Monday, May 9, they were captured in Evansville, Indiana, when their vehicle crashed following a chase. Vicky White was hospitalized with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound and died, officials said.

In the days after the escape, officials learned Casey White and Vicky White, who are not related, had formed a “special relationship.” Here’s what we know about Casey White’s history of violence, his past escape attempt and his physical size … READ MORE. 

According to a November 2016 report from the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA), there are currently around 70,000 such “monsters” living in forced seclusion inside our nation’s prisons.

The study polled 48 jurisdictions within the U.S., accounting for roughly 96% of this country’s prisoners, providing the only current, comprehensive look inside the world of solitary confinement.

“Our highest priority is to operate institutions that are safe for staff and inmates and to keep communities to which prisoners will return safe,” stated Leann K. Bertch, president of ASCA, echoing what most prison administrators express as their reason for using the most extreme version of isolation in this country … READ MORE. 

“According to Dennis Hope, who was convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in 1990, life in Texas’s Allan B. Polunsky Unit is like being in a ‘never-ending torture chamber,’ where he must constantly fight to keep his sanity. He has seen others lose the battle, hanging themselves or slicing open their wrists and faces. Some have responded in even more extreme ways: In 2004, a man with paranoid schizophrenia gouged out his eye and ate it.” – Solitary Watch 

DECADES AFTER PRISON ESCAPES, MEN FACE LIFE IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT WITH NO WAY OUT

Solitary Watch  – Steven Jay Russell, a nonviolent con artist convicted of stealing over $200,000, escaped multiple times, including by feigning a heart attack and faking his own death from AIDS. He once walked out of a facility after using highlighters to dye his prison uniform green, the color of the prison doctors’ scrubs.

These glimpses of the free world were relatively short-lived, and happened decades ago — his most recent re-capture was in 1998. But they permanently cost Russell his freedom.

With 144 years on his sentence, he will spend the rest of his life in prison — and, almost certainly, in solitary confinement … READ MORE. 

Solitary confinement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the United States penal system, upwards of 20 percent of state and federal prison inmates and 18 percent of local jail inmates are kept in solitary confinement or another form of restrictive housing at some point during their imprisonment.

The period of confinement can last from a few days to several decades. According to Homer Venters, former Chief Medical Officer for the New York City jail system, “Solitary confinement is utilised for tens of thousands of people for years at a time.” Many of these people will be held in a Supermax prison- high-tech prisons purposely designed to hold people in strict and prolonged solitary confinement.

As of 2021, there have been attempts in New York to ban the use of solitary confinement for periods of more than 15 days, in line with UN recommendations against the use of torture. SOURCE.