Nystrom couldn't immediately say what time the inmate count began or how long afterward they confirmed two were missing.

The former Correctional Center employee said staff there stopped doing an 11 a.m. head count in February or March. Before that, they counted at 5 and 11 a.m. and at 4 and 9 p.m. every day. He said he thinks the 11 a.m. count was eliminated after the Tecumseh riot happened and state Corrections administrators began working to cut down on the amount of time inmates are confined to their cells each day.

The prison worker, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, said inmates at LCC have been acting out since the Mother’s Day 2015 riot at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution that left two people dead and parts of the prison in ruins. Plus, he said, a number of inmates at LCC have been transferred there from Tecumseh since the riot.

“That’s why staff is quitting, why they can’t retain good staff,” he said. “If you would have proper staff paying attention to the things these two were doing, they probably would not have been able to escape.

“That housing unit (where Dixon and Clausen lived) is so out of control that caseworkers are calling in sick on a day-to-day basis because we have no authority to punish the inmates or disrupt the activity that is going on.