Tom Murton

Thomas O. Murton was an American penologist known for his tenure as warden of Arkansas prison farms. Appointed in 1967 by Governor Winthrop Rockefeller to address corruption at the Tucker and Cummins state prison farms, Murton uncovered violence, extortion and drug trafficking among inmates and staff, and in early 1968 excavated human remains on prison grounds suggesting a history of undocumented deaths. He was dismissed from his post and left the state, and in 1969 published Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal, detailing the corruption he had found. His experience later inspired the fictional film Brubaker, and despite being blackballed from the corrections field afterward, Murton went on to teach and write further on prison reform.