PRISON ESCAPE(Michael D. Warner) PRISON ESCAPE

By Michael D. Warner Copyright 2013 by Michael D. Warner all rights reserved.


As mentioned in an earlier story, inmates do all the work at a federal prison, including plumbing, carpentering, cooking, cleaning, painting, brick/block laying, clerical and more. Okay, prisoner Mel Carp (not his real name :) was a pretty good typist. (This is one decade before dawning of the computer age.) Mel’s daily prison job was in the main prison office. One of his duties was sending and receiving messages and taking care of the teletype machine. Back then, all of law enforcement was connected by nationwide teletype.

For those of you unfamiliar with that machine, it's basically a typewriter connected to a telephone line. One can type directly on it and a message goes out character by character to whatever destination is selected. This is called the "on-line" mode. Nowadays, we would consider the transmission speed extremely slow, like about 10 characters per second max which would be about 100 baud (bits per second). This is about 125 words per minute, 5-letter words. A really fast teletypist can crank out only about 48 words per minute and that would be considered a streak.

For some reason (cost, I would imagine) all teletype paper is yellow and a bit coarse in texture. Now, because using the "on-line" mode ties up a phone line for as long as it may take to type out a wordy message, most operators use the speedier method of first typing in the "off-line" mode, which only cuts a "tape" of the message.

Teletype tape is baudot coded which is a grouping of holes (up to five per character) in a series length of paper tape, about 5/8 inch wide and stored on a roller/spool on the side of the machine.

So, one goes clickety-click on the keyboard and "cuts" a tape of the characters. Upon completion, the operator checks his tape (yes, I can still read baudot) for errors then places it into the card "reader", pushes a "send" button, and waits for the system to come around to call his machine‘s "turn" whereupon the reader pulls the tape through a slot in which small electrical signals are switched on and off by the holes in the tape, thus sending a five-bit character, one at a time. When typing in the "off-line" mode, you also can have the machine produce a paper copy just like when one is typing upon a regular typewriter.

Incidentally, this is where the term "wire services" originated, because all news media was hooked to UP/UPI or AP/API or whatever, like the BBC / etc via teletype (the wire).

Whenever a federal prisoner is released from prison, the orders come in to the prison office via teletype from that judge's federal marshal's office. (By the way, federal marshals work for federal courts. That is basically their reason for existence.) A federal judge may vacate the sentence, or maybe reduce the sentence to time-served, or perhaps an appeal is successful and an appellate court orders the lower court to vacate/etc. Anyway, the judge notifies his marshal and the marshal’s office takes it from there. So, the good news for the inmate enters the prison as the sound of a clacking teletype machine.

All official messaging takes place throughout the bureaucracy using these machines and it is unusual for one to remain silent during a work day for very many minutes.

The end of the message is usually signalled by a bell, sent by the originator as the last character along with several line-feeds and a carriage-return so the message rolls up from the platen and the bell is struck by a little hammer, calling attention. (You can press "ctrl-g" on your p.c. keyboard except now it only makes a little beep.)

Mel had worked in the prison office for a couple years and was pretty much a fixture there, typing all sorts of material for all sorts of official reasons. He had become a reliable asset to the office and everyone knew him.

One day, he came out from the small adjoining teletype room holding a message and wearing a big smile on his face. He was carrying his just-received release papers. His judge had reduced his sentence to "time served" or the equivalent and the teletype indicated it was received from that marshal's office.

Mel was warmly congratulated, given some civilian clothes, a few dollars and a bus ticket to L.A. where he would continue home via his own transportation methods as a free citizen.

Mel was escorted to the main entrance, given a ride in a gov't vehicle to town to the local bus station. And, that was the last anyone ever heard from Mel.

That evening, after transmitting the "count" to Bureau of Prisons (B.O.P.) hq in D.C. the prison was notified that their "count" was one inmate short. The warden ordered a recount. (By the way, prisoners are counted six times per each twenty-four hours at each facility.) This is how they determine when there has been an escape. If one thinks about it, it's the only way to do it. How else would you know someone's gone?)

The marshal's office also sends a copy of the release to the B.O.P. in D.C. when they send it to the holding facility and of course, the D.C. office never received said message.

Anyway, Mel's escape must have been the easiest ever performed by a prisoner, including having the officials provide his ride through the escape-proof heavily guarded gate, and giving him some assets upon which to get started in his new life.

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