Inmate

The last of four inmates who escaped from New Jersey prisons last week was apprehended early Sunday morning. Michael Bentley, 23, of Lincoln Park, Morris County, was picked up in Sussex County about 5:45 a.m. by the New Jersey Department of Corrections Fugitive Squad, said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a corrections spokeswoman. Bentley escaped May 20 with an inmate from Camden County from the Mountain Youth Correctional Facitilty in Annandale. The other inmate, Corey Agostarola, 21, of Pine Hill returned to his home town and was picked up Friday evening by local police.

Two correctional officers were stabbed at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility Tuesday by an inmate who pulled a nine-inch shank from his waistband, authorities said.   One of the officers, James McCurry, was stabbed in the shoulder, and the other, Jheovannnie Williams, was stabbed through his forearm, Philadelphia Prison System spokeswoman Shawn Hawes confirmed Wednesday. The prisoner, identified as Joseph Rios, 18, initially swung the weapon at McCurry and was wrestled to the ground by Williams, but Rios fought Williams off and managed to stab the officers during the struggle, Lorenzo North, president of correctional officers' union Local 159, said in an email.

In what lawyers say is the only case of its kind in the country, a female prisoner here in a remote part of Western Pennsylvania is not being allowed visits by her female lover. Blair County Prison Board officials say that homosexual visits to inmates would violate their policy, which allows for visits only from an inmate's immediate family, spouse, common-law spouse or "boy/girlfriend. " Prison Warden Gary Sparks said Friday that he interpreted that last phrase to mean "the opposite sex. Otherwise, I would consider them friends, and we don't allow friends to visit.

An inmate at Graterford Prison in Montgomery County, held at the prison's infirmary for two days last week before he was transferred to a hospital for neurological treatment, died yesterday at the hospital in Norristown, officials said. Investigators with the Montgomery County coroner's office said inmate Joshua Hall, 41, whose last known address was in the 2100 block of Morris Street, Philadelphia, died at 7:18 a.m. at Montgomery Hospital. They said an autopsy would be performed.

Some kind of outside investigation is needed into the killing of Holmesburg prison inmate Eric Vaughn in December to see if mismanagement is being covered up. That's what's been charged by corrections officer Sandra Camacho, who may have reason to know, in that she was designated to investigate the incident by the Prisons Commissioner's Office. A recent article by Inquirer staff writer Howard Goodman indicates that top prison officials demoted Ms. Camacho rather than accept her findings.

An inmate was ordered held for trial yesterday on charges that he attempted to bribe two police officers transporting him from a court hearing to prison by offering them $30,000 to let him go. At a preliminary hearing yesterday before Municipal Court Judge J. Earl Simmons, one of the officers, Leo Costello, testified that the inmate, Woodrow Mitchell, made the offer when he and Officer Leonard Sheridan were returning Mitchell to the Philadelphia Detention...

Two inmate leaders asked a federal judge yesterday to return them to Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison, saying they had been transferred in retaliation for their involvement in the city's long-running prison overcrowding lawsuit. The two said they were eager to continue their efforts at Holmesburg, which has been in the forefront of inmate activism. "That's where the fight is," said Jesse Kithcart, one of a dozen inmate leaders who were moved to prisons outside the city after a May 23 disturbance at Holmesburg.

An inmate who would have been eligible for parole in four days escaped early yesterday morning from his minimum-security cell at the Delaware Correctional Center near Smyrna. Leon Werkheiser Jr., 21, who was serving a seven-year sentence for assaulting a police officer and drug-related offenses, apparently escaped by pushing out the screen in the window of his cell, scaling a 16-foot fence and climbing over or through barbed wire atop the fence, said State Police spokesman Cpl. William Eubank.

Men and women who come to jail are still human beings. When a person enters prison, it is unfortunately for a criminal act that he has been accused of. He may be innocent, and just too poor and unlucky to prove his innocent position. However he is still a human being entitled to be treated as such, even if he has violated the rights of others and himself. To deprive an inmate of his natural desires that God had put in him is a direct battle with nature. Once we deprive a person of his natural rights, we develop something adverse to his proper development both physically and mentally.

It was dark, about 10:30 p.m. on April 4, when a guard stood just outside the Holmesburg Prison special custody unit that housed inmates who have been cooperating in the ongoing investigation of city prison corruption. The guard, Clarence Irvine Jr., 29, of Michener Street near Limekiln Pike, allegedly flashed his light into the dormitory window and shouted: "F - - - you, snitches. You're all dead. " Irvine then rattled his keys and allegedly shouted: "I got the keys. We're coming in after you snitches.