LITTLE ROCK – Fingerprint scanners now keeping track of visitors to Arkansas state prisons will soon monitor the guards as well.

The biometric devices, already installed at nine prisons across the state, are part of a renewed security push after two convicted murderers wearing guard uniforms walked out the front gate of one facility. The agency also may install radio tags in identification badges, but officials acknowledge that securing the state’s 20 prisons remains the ultimate responsibility of the guards manning them.

“There’s always a human element,” prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler said.

Guard performance remains in question after a string of high-profile problems in the prison system. One inmate nearly died in January after guards left him covered in his own excrement for a weekend. Correction officers also shot a man to death outside a prison for allegedly fleeing a contraband checkpoint.

State lawmakers have called for a subpoena-powered investigation into the prison system, though Gov. Mike Beebe has publicly backed its longtime director. Benny Magness, chairman of the state Board of Correction, is scheduled to speak before a legislative panel Thursday about the recent problems.

The fingerprint scanners will first be used on guards at the state’s Cummins Unit – where convicted murderers Calvin Adams and Jeffrey Grinder escaped in June. Video shows the men put on the uniforms in the prison library after a 6 p.m. head count and walked out of the prison unchallenged during a shift change. Police caught the two in New York four days later.

Tyler said officials plan to capture guards’ fingerprints for the Cummins scanners as soon as next week. She said officials plan to install similar scanners at the state’s Tucker Unit and its maximum-security portion in September.

The agency likely will need $500,000 to remodel existing prison entrances to accommodate the machines, Tyler said.

The state also hopes to receive another half-million dollar grant from the federal government to install a radio tag system at Cummins as well, Tyler said. A tag on an ID badge would activate when passing through a security checkpoint, allowing guards to see who should be holding the badge.

A computer screen would display “who it’s supposed to be and their picture,” Tyler said. “That would require the people who are monitoring to ensure that’s the right person, but that would be ... a reinforcement.”

Such radio tags already are used in prisons across the country, Tyler said. However, she didn’t know of a prison using the tags to monitor their own staff.

Magness will appear Thursday before a legislative panel that questioned prison Director Larry Norris in June. Rep. Steve Harrelson, the majority leader for the state House, said Wednesday that he was impressed with prison officials trying to implement the fingerprint scanning.

“Probably one of the toughest jobs that you can have is being the director of a state prison,” said Harrelson, D-Texarkana. “One of the things I’ve been impressed with is while we have several incidents that have been troubling, it’s probably about in line with what other states surrounding us have experienced.”

Harrelson, who supported lawmakers taking a closer look at the state prisons, said he didn’t know whether an outside investigation was warranted. However, Harrelson already had legislative staffers put together a spreadsheet of prison problems and deaths reported in newspapers over the last six years. There were 94 total entries, ranging from suicides, beatings, deaths and escapes.