‘Jailbreak: Love on the Run’ misses chance to examine staff sexual misconduct at detention centers
Casey White arrives at the Lauderdale County Courthouse for a sentence hearing in Florence, Alabama, in June 2023. White was scheduled to be sentenced following his guilty plea to escape charges related to his 11 days on the run with jailer Vicky White. (Photo by Dan Busey/The TimesDaily via the Associated Press)
Many states including Oklahoma, where I practice, have laws that create strict liability crimes when a person in power engages in a sexual relationship with someone subject to that authority. The underlying theory is someone cannot legally consent in those situations because of the power imbalance.
Which brings us to Netflix’s Jailbreak: Love on the Run, a documentary detailing the story of a career corrections employee and an inmate with multiple violent felonies who was awaiting trial for murder.
Vicky White, assistant director of operations at the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, went missing while escorting inmate Casey White to what she claimed was a mental health evaluation. However, as authorities began to investigate further, they quickly realized Vicky had broken protocol and was likely not the victim of a kidnaping, which they initially believed, according to Jailbreak.
How did the escape happen?
Despite Vicky’s 17 years of service as a corrections officer, the documentary gives the impression that Vicky had been planning Casey’s escape while carrying out her duties as law enforcement.
Before the breakout, she announced plans to retire, sold her home and withdrew $90,00 from the bank. On her last day of employment, Vicky informed co-workers that she was transporting Casey to the Florence courthouse for a mental health evaluation.
To their surprise, the pair never returned.
Due to her position, Vicky didn’t need an elaborate plan to get Casey out of his cell and into a patrol vehicle. This wasn’t some type of “bolt for freedom.” There wasn’t much oversight, and a little bit of scheduling was all she needed to get the two on the open road.
They abandoned her patrol car at an Alabama shopping center. They switched vehicles and went north to Indiana; surveillance footage gave law enforcement the ID necessary to track the couple to a motel. From there a high-speed chase ensued, the getaway vehicle crashed into a ditch and Casey was taken into custody. He eventually pled guilty to escape and is currently serving a life sentence.
Vicky, however, died from a reported self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head sometime during the escape.
Why did Vicky fall for Casey?
When all was said and done, I wasn’t a huge fan of Jailbreak: Love on the Run. I appreciated the access director Dan Abrams secured with Vicky’s friends and former co-workers. But the show felt like an attempt to humanize Vicky and rehabilitate her image rather than a thorough look at the “how and why” behind the relationship that led to the escape.
In addition, I constantly found myself wondering if the genders had been reversed, would the production team cast the male guard in the same light?
For instance, Vicky was not naive in this circumstance. Her relationship with Casey didn’t simply pop up overnight, according to the documentary. And while Jailbreak: Love on the Run does discuss various issues the jail administration could have and should have seen and addressed, it was very surface-level. The production team missed a good opportunity to examine those underlying concerns across a much wider range of systemic problems in county jails nationwide.
Moreover, although the documentary did go into some detail about Vicky’s mental state and possible reasons why she would fall in love with a detainee awaiting trial for murder charges, it could have offered much more. Why not hear from mental health providers and practitioners as to the underlying theories behind these types of circumstances? Instead, we’re mostly left with assertions that Vicky was lonely, she drank her sorrows away and Casey was a charmer who “manipulated” her.
But that explanation seems so underdeveloped. Remember, Vicky was a county jail veteran. She wasn’t a new hire without the training and experience to navigate advances like Casey’s and the emotions they might create. Also, this wasn’t a situation where Casey was an objectively sympathetic inmate. He was a man with a violent history who was already serving a 75-year sentence for shooting a woman during an attempted carjacking and killing his ex-girlfriend’s dog, among other crimes.
As such, more insight into how jail staff could fall for a person with that baggage would be beneficial. Another idea: Interviews with other individuals who found themselves in Vicky’s shoes, with an aim at discovering firsthand accounts to explain how jail staff end up in relationships with the people in their custody.
Instead, the last hour-plus of screen time is filled with detailed accounts of the 11-day manhunt, intermixed with phone sex recordings from Vicky and Casey’s jail calls.
Inmate and jail staff relationships statistics
If you have no background with the specific facts, I could see Jailbreak: Love on the Run playing as a tragic love story with enough suspense and fascination to keep an audience well engaged. There’s something to be said for that.
But the documentary fails to highlight how these types of relationships occur much more often than most laypersons would guess. A 2023 Department of Justice report examined sexual victimization at adult correctional facilities. According to the report, 67% of the staff sexual misconduct perpetrators were female.
Reported examples of sexual misconduct included intentional touching with the intent to arouse; voyeurism for sexual gratification; and completed, attempted or requested sexual acts.
At the time of Vicky and Casey’s disappearance, NBC News reported that the pair’s romantic involvement was “a very common story.”
Some individuals interviewed for the NBC News piece said inmates have an ability to manipulate guards, and such manipulation is the catalyst for instances like Vicky and Casey’s relationship.
However, with statistics to rely on and professionals likely willing to offer their opinions as to the cause of these relationships, Jailbreak: Love on the Run missed an opportunity by not exploring these factors in depth.
But maybe I’m expecting an answer that isn’t there. Maybe one of Casey’s former cellmates is right: “Don’t paint it out that he has a monster. Don’t paint it out that she was a fool. They were just two people, different walks of life, that fell in love.”
Adam Banner
Adam R. Banner is the founder and lead attorney of the Oklahoma Legal Group, a criminal defense law firm in Oklahoma City. His practice focuses solely on state and federal criminal defense. He represents the accused against allegations of sex crimes, violent crimes, drug crimes and white-collar crimes.
The study of law isn’t for everyone, yet its practice and procedure seem to permeate pop culture at an increasing rate. This column is about the intersection of law and pop culture in an attempt to separate the real from the ridiculous.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
