Escape at Dannemora sells one of the most cinematic stories of prison. In what is considered to be the real-life version of Shawshank Redemption, two inmates conned their way out of prison using a guard named Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell (played by Patricia Arquette in the series). The escape was legendary: They weaseled their way out of confinement using smuggled-in power tools and hacksaw blades. Then, with knowledge of the sewer system, they used the pipes to escape through a manhole a few yards away from the prison. A three-week manhunt commenced.
It wasn’t the first scandal for Clinton Correctional Facility, which is located in Dannemora, NY. The site is littered with both scandal and tragedy — it is a prison, after all, a product of a broken system.
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Most recently, the prison faced a scandal that was very similar to the story of Mitchell, Matt, and Sweat. In 2017, Denise Prell, an employee at the prison, was arrested under suspicion that she was having an “inappropriate” relationship with one of the inmates. The inmate was subsequently moved to Elmira Correctional Facility. In 2018 — just this past August, actually — Prell plead guilty to third-degree sexual abuse and promoting prison contraband alongside 23 charges of general misconduct. She received a year-long sentence. Prell, like Mitchell, was a seamstress at Clinton Correctional.
In 2015, the prison faced the case of Leonard Strickland, an inmate who died while incarcerated. A New York Times investigation of Strickland’s death uncovered the unsettling reality of his death: Strickland had likely been murdered by prison guards. A video obtained by the Times in 2015 showed guards dragging a barely-conscious Strickland through the halls of the prison. State police found no “criminal conduct” in the ensuing investigation. After Strickland’s family filed a lawsuit, a judge concluded that while the guards had been “negligent,” their actions did not directly lead to Strickland’s death.
Clinton Correctional Facility was also known for housing high-profile inmates. The rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard, born Russell Tyrone Jones, spent two years in prison for drug charges from 2001 to 2003. In 2002, reporter William Shaw met Jones in Clinton Correctional for an interview. Jones had a new album coming out that he was promoting. When asked if Jones was taking medication, Jones said no.
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“You have to keep your eyes open here, so you can't take anything. This isn't a place where you would want to not know what was going on,” Jones, uncharacteristically reserved, told Shaw. Jones died in 2004, only a year after his release.
Tupac Shakur (Lesane Crooks) also spent time in Clinton Correctional, a stint that later became the subject of a court case. After several of Madonna’s items went on sale in an online auction, Madonna filed a lawsuit asserting that the items were hers and could not be sold. One of these items was a letter from Shakur, who Madonna dated in the ‘90s. He’d written it to Madonna while imprisoned at Clinton Correctional. Parts of the letter were later published by TMZ. In it, Shakur breaks up with Madonna gently, telling her that while he cannot hurt her image as her boyfriend, she would hurt his.
“For you to be seen with a Black man wouldn't in any way jeopardize your career, if anything it would make you seem that much more open and exciting,” he wrote. “But for me at least in my previous perception, I felt due to my 'image' I would be letting down half of the people who made me what I thought I was.”
In the ‘70s, Clinton Correctional received a flurry of attention for something unusual — which actually happened to be fun. The inmates had a ski jump built from snow-filled chicken feed bags, and inmates would use it to jump as high as 50 feet in the air. “It was a very good way to use energy,” Adam Haber, a lawyer and former inmate at Clinton Correctional, told the Times. “Any activity that gets you tired in jail is good.”
The Clinton Correctional facility happens to be one of the oldest prisons in the state of New York. Built in the late nineteenth century, the prison has seen riots, love stories, and the captivity of the rich and famous. For Escape at Dannemora, though, only the recent past is important: the escape of Matt and Sweat, the two men who clawed their way out of prison via manipulation and power tools.