Lovesick Prison Guard
And She Helped Inmate Escape
By Daniel Muniz

Amber Lynn Goff, age 24, was a prison guard for the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas. Regrettably, she fell in love with inmate Steven Ford. Unfortunately, this romantic relationship could never truly blossom as long as Ford was locked up so the young guard cooperated in a plan to help him escape. However, Goff has now pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges in connection to the escape so she will be serving a five year prison sentence.

Goff’s mother, Laurie Ann Nutter, has this to say about the incident:

"She also feels like one of the world's greatest fools. She realizes now there wasn't anything real in the relationship. She feels so extremely foolish, she is angry about it."

Source: The Associated Press

Well duh! Amber Lynn Goff ought to feel like an idiot. What she did was really stupid! And now she is going to burn off the rest of her youthful twenties sitting in a jail cell.

As correctional institutions have already figured out decades ago is that the best and easiest way for a prisoner to escape is to have help from the inside. And that is because a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And regardless of how secure a facility may be or whatever measures are currently in use, the weak link has always been the prison staff and that will continue to be the case for all eternity.

In fact, El Dorado has not had an escape for over 15 years until this incident occurred. Does that mean that no one has fallen in love in over a decade?

Of course not! It just means that the leadership of the institution slackened off which allowed the breach to occur.

And the way that the breakout happened was embarrassing. After the plan was hatched and set into motion, Steve Ford called Goff from his cell phone on the night of the escape. That’s right; this inmate had a cell phone (with email capability) on his person even though prisons strictly forbid such contraband.

So after getting verbal confirmation from Ford, Goff stealthily cut open a padlock of an outer gate with bolt cutters and then drove inside the outermost perimeter of El Dorado. It is outrageous that a prison guard, or anybody else for that matter, should have even been able to so easily penetrate this first boundary without detection. And then by foot, she cut through the next set of fencing with the bolt cutters. Again, it is absolutely inexcusable that Goff was even been able to get this far into the outer layers of a maximum security institution but she did.

Next, she had two pairs of wire cutters. She threw one pair over the fence but it didn’t clear the top. And that was precisely the reason why she had the second pair in which she was then able to finally get it over on the other side. Apparently, this escape plan had accounted for such contingencies because it would have been worthless to get so far in the plan but then not be able to accomplish the escape if something trivial held it up.

Now what happened next from the inside of the prison was also completely inexcusable.

Steve Ford and fellow inmate Jesse Bell had to be outside of the building that housed their cells and within the exercise yard. That way they could grab the wire cutters that were tossed over the fence and cut their way out. And that is also why Ford needed to be able to call Goff from his illicit cell phone in order to inform her that he had made it to the exercise yard which would synchronize the timing of their escape.

Ford and Bell were supposed to be stripped searched before leaving the building and such an examination would have led to the discovery of the cell phone as well as “four” layers of clothing that each inmate had on. But no, they were both allowed to go into exercise yard and snip their way to freedom.

With Goff waiting outside, both inmates hopped inside her vehicle and drove off to freedom.

All three of them were eventually caught in New Mexico. Also, Goff had helped them obtain firearms and ammunition which is another serious violation of the law since both inmates are convicted felons. And it was those federal charges that the prison guard pled guilty to. Prosecutors felt that the federal charges would give her the most prison time because the state laws would have given her tremendous leniency since she had no prior criminal record.

The worst thing about this incident is that nobody else got fired. In fact, the El Dorado was more than happy to sweep everything under the rug because the fallout would have created more bad headlines.

Perhaps the biggest flaw for this and other correctional institutions is that they do not properly account for the possibility of uniformed employees and subcontractors participating in the nefarious schemes of inmates. They know full well that guards and subcontractors are the weak links because the common way for prisoners to obtain drugs, cell phones, and other contraband is to get them from prison staff. And worse, the inmates already know where the negligence exists which is how Goff was able to pull off the escape.

It may not be enough for a prison to explain to its staff not to fall in love with these lowlife degenerates. There will always be people like Goff who are going to be enamored by them. Consequently, a prison will have to maintain a rigid system of checks and balances that prevents an employee from single-handedly circumventing the security apparatus.

So maybe the best thing that this escape accomplished was to serve as a wake up call for all jails and prisons to establish better internal control of their facility and procedures. If not, lovesick correction officers will continue to let things like this happen.

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