Tennessee Inmate Curtis Watson Captured, Officials Say

Curtis Watson, the "extremely dangerous" inmate who escaped prison last week, was captured on Aug. 11. (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation)

The “extremely dangerous” inmate who escaped prison last week after allegedly killing a corrections officer and who sparked a five-day-long manhunt, was captured on Aug. 11, said officials.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) confirmed his capture on Twitter and posted his photo as he sat in the back of a police vehicle clad in camouflage clothing.

Previously, the TBI posted a photo of Watson trespassing at a home in Henning, Tennessee, Newschannel5 reported.

He was seen dressed in camouflage bib overalls and a hat while carrying a backpack.

He also was seen opening a refrigerator at a home in Henning.

According to reports, he escaped from the West Tennessee State Penitentiary on Aug. 7. He has been accused of strangling a Department of Corrections administrator, Debra Johnson, on the morning of his escape.

Correctional officers spotted Watson riding a golf cart at Johnson’s home at around 8:30 a.m., Fox News reported. Between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. is when the assault allegedly took place, officials added.

A number of state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies assisted in his capture, Newschannel5 reported.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.

Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.