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MANILA - Tom Patterson emerged from the Daggett County jail earlier this week with his usual smile.
But the Utah Department of Corrections director was reeling from his discovery of security gaps where two convicted murderers escaped on Sunday.
The gaps varied from inadequate perimeter fencing to security-camera malfunctions to a serious lack of manpower.
Now, Patterson is questioning security at 20 other county jails the state contracts with to house about 1,500 state inmates - almost a fourth of the state's total number of prisoners.
He and Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. have promised a "full review" of state policies regarding inmates sent to county jails.
"It's time to take a look at operational standards at county facilities, particularly in Daggett County," the governor said Thursday.
Though the system had worked "reasonably well" until the escape at Daggett, the governor noted that housing felons is a "dangerous business."
"Something happened at Daggett, and we have to understand what happened," Huntsman said.
During a 90-minute tour of the Daggett County jail with first-year Sheriff Rick Ellsworth on Tuesday, Patterson learned that the lone deputy on duty at the jail Sunday night was sick in the bathroom part of the day while a rookie control-room operator, who is not a peace officer, allowed minimum-security inmates to mingle with hardened criminals, including the two murderers who walked out of an unlocked back door, climbed a fence to the jail's roof and jumped to freedom.
Danny Martin Gallegos and Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo - who remain at large with a $20,000 bounty on their heads - went unnoticed for more than three hours before a deputy discovered them missing during a dinner roll-call.
Communication failures by the Sheriff's Department allowed an even greater lead time for the escapees before Corrections officials could send a search team. A Vernal police dog didn't show up until the next morning.
Patterson, who is not prone to publicly criticizing others, said the security gaps at Daggett County took him by surprise.
"We are aggressively getting a plan together to look at all the county jails," he said.
Corrections spokesman Jack Ford said teams have already been assembled to tour all the jails and to submit reports within 30 days.
Patterson said he would prefer to house all state inmates at Department of Corrections facilities but he simply does not have the beds.
He finds himself in politically volatile territory, threatening to pull prisoners who bring millions of dollars a year to counties if sheriffs don't beef up security.
"It will be made clear that you won't have state inmates unless you rectify these concerns," Ford said of the upcoming reviews.
Patterson said he may pull the most violent offenders - often the biggest flight risks because of their long sentences - from county jails. But it's a tricky proposition because the jails prefer inmates who have long sentences because they are a steady source of income. It's further complicated because many nonviolent offenders in state prison need to be there for medical reasons, to attend court hearings for pending charges or to participate in work-release and other rehabilitative programs. Complicating matters even more, Patterson said, is that many prisoners must remain separated because of gang disputes and other circumstances.
All counties have the right to refuse any inmate, Patterson said. Sheriffs typically refuse to take high-ranking gang members, he said, so they can refuse murderers, too, if they want.
Ford acknowledged that "some county jails are more secure and have a better capability of holding high-security inmates."
But, he said, an inmate's risk is more often determined by his behavior in prison rather than the crimes he committed.
After 17 years behind bars, Gallegos had few write-ups and none serious enough to sound alarms, Ford said. Diaz had no write-ups after two years behind bars.
Gallegos and Diaz took advantage of many of the Daggett County jail's security flaws on Sunday. They were released from their dorm room for an hourlong break between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. and walked a courtyard - surrounded by walls on all sides - with six other men in their "pod."
This happened as minimum-security inmates entered the jail from the back through a door operated by a control-room employee. The group entering, to attend church services, came in contact with Gallegos, Diaz and the others in the courtyard, and at some point the pair slipped out the back door.
The back door somehow remained unlocked, Patterson said, although it appeared locked on a control room computer. The pair then climbed up a fence post covered with razor wire to make it to the roof, police believe. They dashed across and jumped off the west side of the building to avoid climbing another fence.
The DOC requires county jails that house state prisoners to have double fencing to prevent what happened Sunday. If Daggett County jail had two perimeter fences, the escapees would have had to scale twice as much razor wire as they did.
Patterson was unsure how Daggett County's insufficient fencing remained unnoticed, even after an inmate used the same fence to gain access to the roof during an escape in 2005.
Equally puzzling, Patterson said, was why the sheriff allowed just one deputy and one inexperienced control-room operator to watch over 118 inmates. That's far less that DOC's typical ratio of one officer per 10 inmates, he said.
Patterson also wonders why security cameras on the west side of the building were not working.
Sheriff Ellsworth has declined to speak in detail about the jail break, but he said he would address all of Patterson's concerns.
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* GLEN WARCHOL contributed to this report.