news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051116/od_nm/life_prison_dc
Wed Nov 16, 9:06 AM ET DES MOINES (Reuters) - Two convicted murderers were able to climb over a wall and escape from an Iowa prison because budget cuts left some guard towers unmanned, a state senator said on Tuesday.
Click Here Officials at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison were unable to s taff all of the prison's towers because of a lack of state funding and w ere relying instead on an electronic wire "that was supposed to take car e of all the security problems," said Eugene Fraise, a Democrat who repr esents the prison area. Lance Horbach, later disagreed wi th Fraise, however, saying the prison system received more money in its budget than it asked for and the real question was why the alert wire fa iled to do what it was supposed to. The two men escaped on Monday night by tossing a rope on the wall around the facility, and police in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri were still hunti ng for them on Tuesday. Fraise told the Radio Iowa news network he never liked the wire idea beca use: "I always thought that those towers ought to be manned. They were p ut there for a reason, and that was security." The prison on the banks of the Mississippi River was established in 1839 when Iowa was still a territory, and it is the oldest prison west of tha t river.
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