Planning ahead for sick-leave abuse

Public Safety Director Ted Sakai blames numerous factors for the chronic cancellation of visiting days at state prisons, but it’s clear that guards calling in sick when they aren’t remains the core problem.

Recent evidence: Prison officials anticipated that so many female guards wouldn’t come to work on Mother’s Day that they held a special family visitation day the preceding Saturday at the women’s prison on Oahu.

Sure enough, visitation was canceled on the actual holiday, as it was on Father’s Day a month later.

It’s a long-standing problem at other facilities as well. Hiring more guards or switching visiting days from weekends to weekdays is not the answer. Punishing sick-leave abuse is.

Hey, look at me! I’m an escapee!

We don’t want to appear like we’re giving advice to prison escapees, but it seems that if you were somehow able to elude security and make it to the outside, you would not want to draw attention to yourself.

Or maybe you would — on the theory that if you had orange hair and black makeup all over your face, most people would think you’re just another normal citizen in this crazy town of ours.

Unfortunately for escapee Daniel Skelton, that theory didn’t quite work out, and maybe he’ll give the matter more thought before he tries to escape again from Oahu Community Correctional Center.

In any case, kudos to the law enforcement personnel who recaptured Skelton on Wednesday, 59 hours after his escape early Monday.