RYAN SABALOW
Record Searchlight

One day last summer, a suspected Aryan Brotherhood prison gang member got hold of a cellphone and called a friend to break him out.

It was easy enough.

Although 36-year-old Shook had twice been shot over the years while resisting arrest and Placer County's sheriff once called him "one of the most violent and dangerous suspects we've encountered in a long time," state prison officials had nonetheless assigned him to a minimum-security conservation camp in Nevada City.

Now free, Shook headed north toward Siskiyou County, beginning a four-week string of crimes, stealing cars and leading officers on dangerous chases through four counties.

A months long Record Searchlight investigation shows that while Shook's escape was unusual, the decision to allow a violent convict like him to serve part of his time working under light guard in the midst of neighborhoods and rural communities is not.

In fact, at any given time at least one in five of the 4,000-plus inmates at the state's camps have violent criminal histories.

This directly contradicts claims by state officials that only "carefully- screened," nonviolent, low risk inmates are allowed inside the state's 41 minimum-security conservation camps, including a handful in the north state.

Eight months after Shook's escape, as a new fire season approaches, state officials have done nothing to change their policies and insist that no problem exists.

But Harriet Salarno, chairwoman of Crime Victims United of California, said it's disturbing that inmates with violent pasts are being placed in situations where they can quite literally just walk away.

"They're violent, and they can easily escape," she said. "They should be within the prisons' walls."

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Violent Inmates Common

A Record Searchlight and Scripps Howard News Service analysis of the primary offenses of conservation camp inmates between 2005 and 2010 shows:

While the overwhelming number of inmates in the camps were nonviolent offenders such as car thieves, repeat drunken drivers, embezzlers and drug abusers, at least 20 percent of the inmates at the camps at any given time had been convicted of robberies, carjackings, assaults, altercations with police or other violent crimes.

Those numbers appear to be climbing slightly. In 2006, about 20 percent of the camp inmates had been convicted of violent offenses. In the summer of 2010, 23.4 percent had.

More than 200 inmates assigned to the camps between 2005 and 2010 had been convicted of violent crimes against police. Some of these crimes involved firearms or left officers injured. More than 30 of the inmates had been convicted of injuring or killing someone in police chases.

Two inmates had been convicted of kidnapping. Four had been convicted of hostage taking. Two other inmates were serving sentences for escaping custody or not returning from furlough.

Although state prison officials say documented "prison gang" members are supposed to be forbidden from entering the camps, 15 of the inmates had been convicted specifically of committing crimes related to street gangs.

There also were killers. Between 2005 and 2010, 14 inmates convicted of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter worked in the camps. Another inmate was listed as a murderer, but prison officials late last week said that conviction occurred after he was placed in the camp and he was pulled from the camp when the murder charge was filed. He was convicted and now is back in prison. The murder occurred before the inmate was imprisoned on a lesser charge, a prison spokeswoman said. Local law enforcement leaders said they were stunned by the severity of the offenses, particularly the crimes against police.

"These are the same people who we're putting an ax or a chain saw in their hands," said Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko.

'No History of Violent Crime'

The corrections department website paints a different picture of the typical camp inmate.

"Only minimum custody inmates - both male and female - may participate in the Conservation Camps Program," the department's website says. "To be eligible, they must be physically fit and have no history of violent crime including kidnapping, sex offenses, arson or escape." When pressed last month about the newspaper's findings, spokespeople with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation repeatedly denied that violent inmates were being placed at the camps in violation of their own policies.

"My understanding is ... if inmates are considered violent they're not allowed," said spokeswoman Terry Thornton.

The officials also questioned whether the newspaper's interpretation of violent or dangerous crimes fit with the state's official legal definition of what constitutes a dangerous inmate.

"Any crime will victimize a person," Thornton said. "We've got to get away from subjective definitions."

Thornton provided a list of offenses the state's penal code defines as "serious" and "violent."

Yet most of the violent offenses on the lists matched the violent crimes the Record Searchlight identified in its analysis of the prisoner data obtained through the California Public Records Act.

For instance, the state classifies inmates convicted of carjacking and robbery as violent and serious offenders. The Record Searchlight's analysis of the five years of data found that 876 camp inmates had been convicted o fcarjacking.Another 781hadbeenconvicted of first-degree robbery.

After reviewing the Record Searchlight's findings, N. Prabha Unnithan, director of the Center for the Study of Crime and Justice at Colorado State University, said he was "mystified" that prison officials would deny that inmates who'd committed violent crimes were being placed at the camps.

He said any reasonable person who looked at their crimes would say that they were violent.

"Your interpretation seems quite reasonable," he said.

He also noted that because most felons accept plea bargains that reduce the severity of their primary felony, many of the camp inmates' actual crimes likely were much more egregious.

Requests to interview the state's top prison official, Secretary Matthew Cate, were declined by his department's press office.

Non-Dangerous Inmates Screened

According to prison officials and inmate classification documents, prisoners are placed in camps based on a point system designed to promote good behavior and weed out dangerous offenders.

The average sentence for adult inmates selected for camp is less than two years, and the average time they will spend in camp is eight months, officials say.

Rapists, egregious sex offenders, those serving life sentences, arsonists and those with a history of escape attempts are forbidden from staying at minimum-security facilities, the documents say.

Thornton said inmates are screened based on six criteria designed to guarantee only the best-behaved, most-capable prisoners make it to the camp.

Documented prison gang members aren't allowed in either. Thornton said that just because someone was convicted of participating in a street gang, it doesn't mean he belongs to one of the documented gangs in the prison system.

She said there are just seven such prison gangs.

All the other street gangs - including the notorious Bloods and Crips and Norteos and Sureos - are classified as "disruptive groups," Thornton said.

Law enforcement officials say the Norteos and Sureos are out-of-custody affiliates of the Nuestra Familia and Mexican Mafia prison gangs.

Lawmakers Ask Whether 'Bar has dropped'

The growing number of violent inmates at the camps raises alarms with state lawmakers who say the trend is worrisome enough on its own. given that during the past five decades, state and local officials have become reliant on the camp's cheap labor and fire protection.

While paid yellow Nomex- clad state firefighters hold the hoses, drive fire engines and pilot helicopters, the orange-garbed inmate fire crews do much of the firefighting grunt work, cutting fire lines with hand tools, falling burned trees with chain saws and making sure fires don't flare up after they're contained.

In the off-season, they pick up trash and clean debris along the side of the state's highways, cut fire breaks and fill sandbags at floods.

Inmates work an average of 10 million work hours per year, saving taxpayers more than $80 million annually, compared with what the state would have to pay to staff the handcrews with employees, prison officials said.

But now there's added concern that fire camp commanders may soon find themselves with a labor shortage.

To reduce prison crowding and trim the state's budget, Gov. Jerry Brown this month signed a law that will shift the state's lowest-risk inmates - like many of those serving their sentences at the camps - to the custody of the state's 58 counties.

Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, asks who will staå the state's fire camps if the safest inmates in the prison system are sent back to local jails. "Whatever we've got now, it's only going to get vastly worse," he said.

Nielsen, a vocal critic of the state's prison and parole system and former president of the state's Board of Parole and Prison Terms, said he's concerned that budget cuts and mandates to reduce the prison population might be prompting prison officials to place dangerous inmates in fire camps.

Indeed, according to the corrections department's inmate classification records, an inmate can gain faster camp placement if there's a "shortage of camp qualified inmates."

State Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, said the trend is extremely disconcerting, especially because the fire camps have proven to be so valuable to the state.

"It really increases the possibility - the bad possibility - that something bad can happen to a person because the bar has been dropped so low," he said.

Dangerous Inmate On The Fire Line

Bad possibilities don't get much worse than the case of Shook.

The 36-year-old Lincoln man walked away from Washington Ridge Conservation Camp in Nevada City on July 7 using that smuggled cellphone to call for a ride.

Although camp inmates aren't supposed to be placed near their hometowns, to avoid the possibility of a walkaway, Shook was placed in a camp in a county that bordered the one where he lived before he was sent away.

In 2006, Shook was convicted by plea bargain on joint charges filed in Placer and Sutter counties. Placer County deputies say Shook had a habit of leading them on car chases in stolen cars.

He initially had been accused of auto theft, methamphetamine possession and trying to run down a Placer County sheriff's detective in Yuba City in 2005.

Shook was shot in the arm during that encounter. Siskiyou County sheriff's Capt. Jim Betts said Shook also had previously been shot by deputies in Orange County.

It was Placer County Sheriff Ed Bonner who called Shook one of the most dangerous men his department had ever encountered.

Although Shook may be one of the worst inmates to escape, walkaways from the camps are relatively common.

The state averaged nine of them a year between 1999 and 2009.

There were at least two escapes last month.

Authorities say Nathan Simpson, a 30-year-old car thief from Siskiyou County, escaped from Delta Conservation Camp in Suisun City in March. He was recaptured a few days later in Rio Vista.

Corrections officials are still searching for Yahua Yang, a drug offender from Los Angeles County who last month walked away from Owens Valley Conservation Camp in Inyo County.

'Tough To Catch'

Investigators say Shook's aggressive behavior didn't get better during his time in prison.

After his escape, Shook stole three cars and led officers on three more car chases, Betts said.

"He was tough to catch," Betts said. "There were some CHP cars wrecked in the process. We were lucky to get him."

SWAT deputies finally caught up with him at a Happy Camp trailer park where he'd holed up with one of his Aryan Brotherhood prison buddies.

When he saw deputies close in, he hopped in a pickup he'd stolen when he'd passed through Red Bluå.

But this time, officers were able to box him in with their patrol cars. He surrendered.

After Shook's arrest, prison officials said that because he hadn't actually been convicted of any violent crimes, he was still eligible for fire camp assignment.

The officials also said Shook wasn't documented by prison officials as an Aryan Brotherhood gang member.

"If he had been, he would not have been eligible for fire camp placement, and he would have been housed in Pelican Bay State Prison," Margaret Pieper, a spokeswoman at Shook's former fire camp, said after his arrest.

Betts said that after Shook was arrested, he was sent to High Desert State Prison, a medium and high-security lockup in Susanville.

Apparently, he wasn't there for very long.

Corrections spokeswoman Thornton said Shook is currently housed at the nearby California Correctional Center, a minimum-security facility whose primary mission is to train inmates before they're shipped out to work at one of 18 of Northern California's fire camps.

Thornton guaranteed that Shook was in a higher- security ward, one not associated with the camp trainees.

"He's in an environment where he cannot escape," Thornton said.

Copyright 2011 Record Searchlight
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April 17, 2011