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54 Fed. Probation 36 (1990)
Prison Escapes and Community Conseqences: Results of a Case Study

handle is hein.journals/fedpro54 and id is 130 raw text is: Prison Escapes and Community Consequences: Results of A Case Study* BY KATHERINE A- CARLSON, Ph.D. Associate Faculty, Peninsula College, Port Angeles, Washington Introduction Y EARS OF some effort and much rhetoric about rehabilitation and reform have had little effect on the central functions most Americans expect from prisons; security and con- trol continue to dominate these expectations and, accordingly, continue to dominate the practices of correctional professionals. The significance of this prevailing ideology is seldom more apparent than in the expression of fears and reassurances that accompany siting of a new prison. Siting decisions invariably provoke public questions about num- bers of escapes and usual escapee behaviors. These, along with other concerns about crime rates, inmate families, and community image and lifestyle, become the issues that corrections offi- cials must address to attain community accep- tance of the facility. This scenario of concern and response is in- creasingly common under today's conditions of expanded prison construction. Nineteen eighty- eight was the 14th consecutive year in which the number of state and Federal prisoners reached a new high, a trend the Bureau of Justice Statis- tics claims . . .translates into a nationwide need for 800 new prison beds per week (1989, p.1). With most states engaged in the building or the planning of new facilities (Camp & Camp, 1987), the questions raised by residents of potential prison sites heighten the focus on corrections and its community impacts. Also, while many com- munities are now actually seeking out prisons, these open doors are always contingent on reas- surance of minimal risks to community security and comfort (Pagel, 1988; Baumbach, 1984). Data from a variety of sources, including sev- eral recent studies on prison impact, is available to rebut most concerns and reinforce positive expectations of prison effects (Lidman, 1988; Abrams et al., 1987; Rogers & Haimes, 1987; Smykla, 1984; Zarchikoff et al., 1981). The domi- *The research on which this article is based was sup- ported by a grant from the National Institute of Justice (#85-IJ-CX-0022), administered through the Clallam County Sheriffs Department, Steven Kernes, sheriff. nant finding of all these studies is that the most notable effect of prisons on communities is their contributions to the local economy; most common- ly feared negative consequences either do not occur or appear to be minimal. Breaches of insti- tutional security through escapes are relatively uncommon except in minimum security facilities, with little or no local crime attributable to es- capees. This supports the conclusion of Abrams and her associates about prison impact that risk to residents in the communities surrounding the facilities from inmates or escapees is small (1987, p. 172). Elsewhere I have argued that opposition to prisons can best be understood as objection to undesirable community and lifestyle change which prisons seem likely to bring to communities (Carl- son, 1988a). These effects are most notable when the potential site is small and rural, conditions that fit the majority of prison locales (Carlson, 1987). Escapes and their consequences are thought to lead to such changes and other nega- tives and thus serve as ready illustrations of how life will be different with a prison. Prison op- ponents use arguments about prison security and risk to safety to express their worries about how the facility might alter their own personal securi- ty and increase their sense of risk in their com- munity. For opponents, these lifestyle changes are more significant than potential prison-induced improvements in the local economy. The perception of risks, whether from a prison or a nuclear power plant or some other hazard- ous facility, is ultimately a judgment based on cultural values (Gross & Rayner, 1985; Slovic et al., 1979). Calculating the significance of such risks is not a simple matter of rationally comput- ing objectively probable harm or loss against counter-balancing benefits; the weighing of these items is not standard, and differing evaluations of their importance will lead to differing conclusions. Slovic and his associates point out that hard evidence about the probability of hazard does not eliminate varying assessments, since people ... respond not just to numbers but also to qualita- tive aspects of hazards (1979, p. 38). The claim therefore, that two or three or five escapees who promptly leave town are not worthy of anxiety is

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