ALBION, Pa. -- Five employees of the state prison in this Erie County borough bear much of the blame for the escape of convicted murderer Malcolm Kysor, Pennsylvania's top corrections official said yesterday.

Four of the workers face disciplinary sanctions and former Albion superintendent Marilyn S. Brooks, relieved of command last week, could be fired.

"This escape should not have occurred. Procedures that were in place were not followed," Jeffrey A. Beard, secretary of corrections, said as he released a 67-page report detailing failings of Ms. Brooks and a handful of her staff members.

Mr. Kysor hid in an oversized garbage can, then was driven out of the prison Nov. 25 on a pickup truck carrying containers of "pig slop" bound for a farm in Erie County.

A 53-year-old career criminal, Mr. Kysor remains free. He was serving a life sentence for beating a man to death with a golf club in 1981.

The corrections department's internal investigation said Ms. Brooks was lax in running the medium-security prison with 2,300 inmates.

An analysis of the prison's weaknesses in October 2005 highlighted the possibility of a breakout similar to the escape Mr. Kysor pulled off, Mr. Beard said. Ms. Brooks was supposed to make sure a plan to correct those deficiencies was put into effect and documented in a report.

The corrections department's investigation could find no evidence that the work was done, Mr. Beard said.

He has handpicked Raymond Sobina as Albion's new superintendent. Mr. Sobina, 52, is the most experienced prison superintendent in Pennsylvania, having done the job for 15 years.

Ms. Brooks still remains on the state payroll at an annual salary of about $112,000. Mr. Beard said he would decide her fate in the next two weeks.

He said he had hoped to meet with her by now to review what wrong at Albion, but she took sick leave and has been unavailable. Ms. Brooks, 54, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Disciplinary hearings began Wednesday for four other prison employees accused of violating procedures or failing to carry out their duties, Mr. Beard said. One more worker also could face disciplinary action.

He would not identify those employees, but said they were guilty of complacency or carelessness.

Mr. Kysor made 42 cents an hour as a garbage worker in the prison's dietary unit. He was supposed to be off Nov. 25, a Sunday, but prison staff members allowed him to "volunteer" for an extra shift. It was then that he made his break to freedom.

A 26-year-old inmate named John Gromer helped Mr. Kysor get inside a large garbage can that was not supposed to be used in the dietary department. Mr. Beard said Mr. Kysor may have added bigger gray cans to the small yellow ones used to remove waste from the prison. At 160 pounds, Mr. Kysor could fit inside the larger cans.

Even so, Mr. Kysor should have been caught when the pickup he was riding on was stopped for inspection at a prison gate, Mr. Beard said.

But an Albion sergeant neglected to make a thorough investigation of the truck, Mr. Beard said.

Specifically, the sergeant failed to hook up "a heartbeat detector" that would have pinpointed living cargo riding with the cans of pig slop, Mr. Beard said. In addition, the sergeant failed to poke the garbage cans with a metal rod, as regulations require.

Inmate counts now will be conducted before trucks leave all Pennsylvania prisons, Mr. Beard said. This precaution was being used at some prisons, but not at Albion.

Albion had not had an escape in its 14-year history until Mr. Kysor broke out. He was the first inmate in eight years to escape from any Pennsylvania prison.

Surveillance cameras captured photos of him working his way into the garbage can with the help of inmate Gromer. Mr. Beard, though, said he could not fault prison employees for failing to spot this on monitors.

He said Albion has 140 surveillance cameras, and employees go numb within minutes if they try to watch them all. He said a prison staff member would have needed pure luck to glance at the appropriate monitor during the two or three seconds it took Mr. Kysor to slip inside the garbage can.

But Mr. Beard faulted the Albion staff for being slow to alert nearby residents and the media of Mr. Kysor's escape.

Prison workers notified state police of the escape at 6:16 p.m., but took another one to two hours to tell the public and then the press, Mr. Beard said. His superintendents will be under order to make timely announcements about missing inmates, even if this leads to false alarms. Inmates missing during counts often are found inside prison walls.

FBI agents said they believe Mr. Kysor fled Pennsylvania soon after he escaped. A federal warrant filed last month said he probably is in Minnesota or Indiana, where he has relatives.