The state agency that oversees prisons does not expect to make changes, following the escape of an inmate last week from a downstate, minimum security prison.
Officials issued an alert when Marcus Battice escaped from Vandalia Correctional Center, where he was serving time for stealing a car. Battice turned up the next morning, about three-and-a-half miles away.
Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Tom Shaer says it was spontaneous, the 21-year-old didn't bring warm clothes, extra food or water. And he'd been classified as low-risk eligible for parole in January.
Shaer says it's been 17 years since someone escaped from Vandalia, and it's unlikely the department will make sweeping changes to its policies.
"So if there were a systemic problem or there was something at Vandalia, meaning this was bound to happen, we would have known about it and it would have happened sooner. Which it did not."
Another inmate walked away from a work crew in Robinson last year and was on the loose for several days. That did result in changes: when prisoners work outside the walls, their clothes are now printed with a state phone number. Shaer says it's believed that prisoner wanted to turn himself in earlier, but didn't know how.
