The Prison Journal

http://tpj.sagepub.com Frequency and Characteristics of Prison Escapes in the United States: An Analysis of National Data
Richard F. Culp The Prison Journal 2005; 85; 270 DOI: 10.1177/0032885505279412 The online version of this article can be found at: http://tpj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/85/3/270

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THE PRISON 10.1177/0032885505279412 Culp / PRISON JOURNAL ESCAPES/ September 2005

FREQUENCY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PRISON ESCAPES IN THE UNITED STATES: AN ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL DATA
RICHARD F. CULP John Jay College of Criminal Justice

This article presents findings of a study on prison escapes in the United States from 1988 through 1998, including escape frequencies, captures, characteristics of escapees, methods employed in escaping, violence against correctional staff, and escapee involvement in further crimes in the community. Secondary analysis of data sets from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data indicates changing escape rates, inmate characteristics, and prison characteristics through the time period. Analysis of newspaper accounts of 88 prison escapes from 1997 to 1998 provide information on the means used in escaping. The article suggests incorporating a routine activities perspective and multilevel models in research on prison incidents.

Keywords:

prison escape; news media and prisons; prison statistics

If there were such a thing as first principles in the field of corrections, the idea that prisons ought to prevent inmates from escaping would certainly qualify for the list. Although consensus may be lacking on the primary goal of imprisonment, be it punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, or simply incapacitation, the means to the end include control over an inmates whereabouts. The primacy of maintaining custody of inmates is implicit in the mission statements of virtually all state-level departments of correction (DOC). Such commonality in mission has led prison jurisdictions around the country to refine inmate classification procedures and build a continuum of security levels within their prison systems. Of course, prisoners continue to escape, revealing both the limits of our ability to predict human behavior and the fallibility of carceral technology. Although the public is largely unaware of what goes on behind prison walls,

This work was supported (in part) by a grant from the Professional Staff CongressCity University of New York Research Award Program.
THE PRISON JOURNAL, Vol. 85 No. 3, September 2005 270-291 DOI: 10.1177/0032885505279412 2005 Sage Publications

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the inevitable prison escape tends to arouse public fear and curiosity along with media attention, and the normally closed world of a prison is temporarily opened to public scrutiny. Although most escapes are relatively minor events involving minimum security and nonviolent inmates, some escapes involve violent and tragic outcomes. Such incidents tend to trigger legislative attention, special investigations, and abrupt changes in prison staffing, procedures, and programs. Given the cornucopia of criminal justice data collected in the United States, it is somewhat surprising that precise records on prison escapes are not maintained on a rigorous, standardized basis. Although the various DOCs keep track of serious incidents, such as prison escapes within their own jurisdictions, there is an absence of readily available public information on a national level. Beyond aggregate jurisdictional approximations of how many prisoners escape from custody, little is known about (a) how many escaped prisoners are captured, (b) the characteristics of escapees and the methods they employ in escaping, (c) how many escapees are involved in additional crimes in the community, (d) the risk of violent behavior posed by an escapee, and (e) whether the growth in prison population during the past decades has resulted in a greater number of escapes. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of what we currently know about prison escapes. As there has not been a published literature review of escape research in a dozen years, the article begins by bringing us up to date in this regard. Next, the article presents an analysis and critique of current national data on prison escapes. Data sources include annual surveys conducted by the American Correctional Association (ACA), Criminal Justice Institute, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Despite a number of reliability and validity problems with these escape statistics, the data do provide a longitudinal framework for understanding prison escape trends and offer additional insight into characteristics of inmates that escape. National-level data, however, lack the capacity to report specific escaperelated activities of inmates involved in individual incidents. To gain insight into the more qualitative features of escapes, a subset of escapes was drawn from news media archives for analysis. These cases were helpful in understanding escapee background, the most common means employed in escaping, and the level of danger escapes pose for correctional staff and the general public. The article concludes with general observations on the prison escape phenomena and provides suggestions for further research.

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PRIOR RESEARCH ON ESCAPES Earlier research on prison escapes in Georgia (Anson & Hartnett, 1983), New York (Chard-Wierschem, 1995), and Canada (G. Campbell, Porporino, & Wevrick, 1985) found age to be correlated with escape: Younger inmates are more escape prone than their older peers. Escapees are more likely to be property offenders than violent offenders (Murphy, 1984; Verlag, 1978), men rather than women (Chard-Wierschem, 1995), and White rather than Black (Cowles, 1981; Haisted, 1985; Murphy, 1984). A prior history of escape and a record of previous confinements have also been found to be correlates of escapes (Johnston, Porporino, & Sturrock, 1991). In examining possible dynamic or situational factors associated with escape, Campbell (1983) found that escapees from minimum-security institutions in Los Angeles County were distinguishable by their levels of community and social stability, social accountability, and personal responsibility. Among mentally ill offenders, Quinsey, Coleman, and Jones (1997) found a correlation between antisocial personality characteristics and escape. Sandhu (1996), in a study of murderer escapees in Oklahoma, identified a correlation between escapes and drug and alcohol abuse. In a number of studies, researchers examined the dependability of various clinical and supplemental scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory on predicting inmate escape risk but collectively produced inconsistent results (Fisher, 1977; Scott, Mount-Michael, & Duffy, 1977; Shaffer, Bluoin, & Pettigrew, 1985). In general, static factors have been shown to be more reliable than dynamic factors in predicting inmate escape. Beyond the realm of individual inmate characteristics, a couple of studies examined factors in the prison social environment that might account for prison breaks. The Centre for Research, Evaluation, and Social Assessment (1996) in New Zealand found a key difference between inmate and prison staff perceptions on why escapes occurred: Inmates attributed escapes to internal pressures such as boredom and depression, whereas prison staff members believed that external pressures involving family and personal relationships prompted most escapes. The researchers also found that most escapes were spontaneous and poorly planned. Duncan and Ellis (1973) also found inmates self-reported internal prison issues (rather than problems in the external world) as the prime motivation for escapinginmate concern with pending administrative reclassification decisions was the most frequently cited reason. Duncan and Ellis concluded that better staff communication about at-risk inmates would have a greater impact on reducing escape attempts than the hardening of institutional security features.

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A number of studies looked at staffing levels and conditions of confinement related to overcrowding and inmate behavior. Anson and Hartnett (1983) found a relationship between escapes and the institutional ratio of treatment staff: Greater numbers of treatment personnel served to deter prison escapes. Nacci, Teitelbaum, and Prather (1977) found a positive correlation between population density and assaultive behavior but no relationship between overcrowding and escapes. A study by Lee-Jan (1980) replicated the finding that overcrowding was positively correlated to disruptive behavior but found escapes to be negatively correlated to population increases (as population increased, the number of escapes actually went down). In considering whether austere conditions of confinement (deprivation theory), management factors (management theory), or outside influences (importation theory) had the greater effect on serious incidents in prisons, McCorkle, Miethe, and Drass (1995) found that management factors, such as the diversity of corrections staff and inmate involvement in educational, vocational, and industrial programs, bore the stronger relationship with inmate misconduct (diverse staff and inmate involvement helped to reduce misconduct). Taken together, these studies suggest that management factors influence the incidence of escape more so than poor conditions of confinement brought on by overcrowding. A few studies have examined crime committed by escapees in the local community surrounding prison facilities. Sundin (1971) found that escapee criminal behavior generally amounted to simple larceny and traffic offenses. In a study of walkaways from minimum-security facilities, Murphy (1984) identified only 1 percentage of escapees as being involved in any type of serious crime in the vicinity of the correctional facility. And in a project that examined local community reaction to a new maximum-security prison, Carlson (1990) found generally low-level criminal behavior on the part of escapees. Although some community residents resented the potential threat that escapees imposed on the community, most prison neighbors believed that the economic benefits of the prison outweighed any negative effects and that the risk of inmate escapes was low. The question of changing escape frequency from year to year has received only limited attention. Davis (1992) reported that nationally, the annual prisoner escape rate had declined from 1.93% of the inmate population in 1984 to 0.78% in 1991. In absolute numbers, escapes declined during 1992 even though the inmate population had increased. Lillis (1994) examined interstate comparisons of prison escapes for 1993 and noted a slight decline in the number of escapes from 1992 to 1993. Lilliss study was unique in reporting the number of correctional staff and private citizens injured in the course of

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escapes (in 822 escapes, there was a total of 5 correctional staff and 8 private citizen injuries). Occasionally, journalists have reported trends in national data in followup reporting on prison escapes. Prompted by the escape of a death row inmate in Texas, for example, Johnson (1998) interviewed staff at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and reported a total of 5,380 escapes from all jurisdictions in 1997. According to Johnson, the figure represented only 0.5% of the correctional population and was down from the 1.5% escape rate in the 1980s (p. 2). No specific source was given for the data in the authors account. Similarly, the escape of 7 inmates from a Texas prison in December 2000 prompted widespread media coverage of the escape phenomenon, including an investigative article by Gillman (2002). Citing data from the Criminal Justice Institute, Gillman reported that in the past decade, 34,000 more inmates escaped in the United States than were captured. Although the figure is arithmetically true to the data source, it overstates the case by totaling unreconciled consecutive year-end counts. Such news media attention to the problem of escape underscores the public policy importance of the issue while exposing the relative inaccessibility of escape data and the paucity of researchderived information. METHOD The present study begins with a description and comparative analysis of major sources of national prison escape data. Because 1997 was the most recent year in which four major sources collected escape information, it is used as a benchmark for evaluating the reliability and validity of prison escape data. The study then provides secondary analysis of a number of databases from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) to identify longitudinal trends in prison escape rates and changing characteristics of escapees. These data include the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP; annual data from 1983 to 1999) and the Census of State Correctional Facilities (Census). Census data from 1984 and 1995 are used to help frame a time series and identify changes in correctional facilities that may account for varying prison escape rates. Data files were downloaded from the NACJDs Web site and analyzed using SPSS software. As the NCRP is compiled from the universe of departing inmates (rather than a sample) and is a large data set (an average of about 400,000 cases each year), missing data are assumed to be missing at random, and listwise deletion is used in statistical analysis. Listwise deletion did not produce any substantive changes in mean or variance of the variables analyzed in the study.

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The print news media were used to identify a set of individual prison escapes for further analysis. News media accounts of prison escapes provide rich narrative descriptions of how inmates managed to escape, supply background information on inmates, and generally report other details, such as whether violence was used or if private citizens were victimized. To include a sufficient set of escape incidents, the study drew from a 2-year period (1997 to 1998). Escape incidents were limited to only those from medium security or higher security level state prisons. Walkaways from minimum-security facilities, failures to return from approved absences, and escapes from custody staff while being transported outside of the prison were excluded. Narratives were extracted from the Lexis-Nexis database using keyword searches that identified all prison escapes reported in the print news media during 1997 and 1998. An initial collection of 4,248 narratives was pared to a set of 88 incidents that met the studys definition of escape. RESULTS
ESCAPES

The U.S. Department of Justice, BJS maintains detailed databases on many characteristics of the incarcerated population but does not explicitly track prison escapes. Through the annual NCRP, BJS records the number and characteristics of all prisoners entering and leaving state prisons during each calendar year. The NCRP is based on a questionnaire completed by the 50 state DOCs plus the California Youth Authority with individual inmates as the unit of analysis. It has been conducted annually since 1983. Among the survey questions is one that asks whether each departing inmate had been absent without leave (AWOL) or on escape status at any time while serving his or her sentence. Recorded with a simple yes or no answer, the escape question covers the entire period of an inmates sentence, and AWOL and escape are aggregated into the same variable. The AWOL category includes what are commonly referred to as walkaways (i.e., leaving a minimumsecurity facility without permission or failing to return to the facility from an authorized leave). The NCRP also reports on the type of release of each prisoner leaving correctional custody during the year. Type of release includes such categories as parole board decision, probation release, expiration of sentence, transfer, inmate death, and escape or AWOL. According to the NCRP, among inmates who left prison in 1997, 2.5% reportedly escaped or were absent without permission at some time while serving their sentence, and a total of 4,456 departed by way of escape. Research into the number of

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TABLE 1: Comparison of Prison Escape Databases for 1997

Escapes Reported in 1997 Name of Survey

NCRP Corrections Compendium ACA Directory Corrections Yearbook

All Escapes
3,427 b 5,743 9,482c d 8,496
a

Excluding Walkaways
n/a 684 n/a 1,226

NOTE: NCRP = National Corrections Reporting Program; ACA = American Correctional Association. a. National Corrections Reporting Program: reports from 39 jurisdictions (year ending December 31, 1997). Individual prisoner count adjusted to reflect total escape incidents rather than total escaped inmates. b. Corrections Compendium: reports from 43 jurisdictions (year ending December 31, 1997). c. American Correctional Association: reports from 47 jurisdictions 97 (year ending June 30, 1997). d. Corrections Yearbook: reports from 52 jurisdictions (year ending December 31, 1997).

inmates involved in individual escape incidents suggests that, on average, 1.3 inmates are involved in each escape incident (Culp & Bracco, 2005). Dividing the NCRP inmate count by the 1.3 inmates per escape ratio yields a total number of 3,427 escape incidents for the year (see Table 1). The ACA, in its bimonthly journal Corrections Compendium, periodically conducts surveys on substantive correctional issues, including frequency counts of serious incidents, such as riots, disturbances, inmate suicides, and escapes. The journal surveyed escapes from state prisons during calendar years 1996 and 1997. Forty-two states participated in the survey. Unlike the NCRP, which is inmate based, the Corrections Compendium data are aggregated by jurisdiction. However, the Corrections Compendium survey disaggregates escapes and walkaways. In 1997, a grand total of 5,743 escapes were reported in the Corrections Compendium survey. The ACA also reports an aggregate jurisdictional count of escapes in its annual Directory of Juvenile and Adult Correctional Departments, Institutions, Agencies, and Paroling Authorities (the ACA Directory 1998-1999). The ACA Directory counted 9,482 escapes from 47 reporting jurisdictions in 1997. A fourth database is published annually in Corrections Yearbook (Camp & Camp, 1988-1999). Based on a survey of the 50 state-level DOC plus the District of Columbia and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the data are reported by jurisdiction and distinguish walkaways from escapes. With responses

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from 51 jurisdictions, Corrections Yearbook counted a total of 8,496 escapes and walkaways in 1997. A comparison of these disparate escape counts is displayed in Table 1. There is considerable variability in the escape data as reported by these four sourcesa difference of 6,055 escapes or 176%between the low and high escape counts. Although the reliability problem may be in part related to different response rates and different responding jurisdictions among the surveys, the survey with the highest response rate does not render the highest total escape count, suggesting that other factors may be involved. One confounding factor may be the lack of precision, a characteristic of many prison incident information systems. A national study of recordkeeping systems and electronic reporting capability in state and federal prison systems found that only half of all departments maintained detailed reports of inmate misconduct while in prison and that most of these data were in paper rather than electronic form (Beck, 1998). According to the study, although information on an inmates escape or AWOL history was available during initial classification in 92.5% of the jurisdictions, only 82.7% reported that they had adequate documentation to identify inmates who escaped while in custody and that 55.8% maintained accessible records detailing which prisoners escaped during prison program participation (Sabol, 1998). These findings suggest that the validity of escape counts varies considerably among jurisdictions. Additionally, construct validity is eroded by inconsistent definitions of exactly what constitutes an escape. For example, some states in the ACA surveys included minimum-security walkaways in their count, whereas others did not. The definitional problem is highlighted in the dramatically different counts of walkaways recorded in the 1997 surveys: Corrections Compendium counted 5,059, whereas Corrections Yearbook tallied 7,270. Recognizing the extent of this problem, the Association of State Correctional Administrators is developing a more standardized definition of escape to be used in its prison performance standards (Association of State Correctional Administrators [ASCA], 2002). The proposed ASCA definition of escape excludes walkaways and AWOLS, escapes from transportation, and escapes involving inmates who breach the prisons security walls and fences but are apprehended prior to leaving prison grounds (the current study used the ASCA definition in compiling a set of escapes from the news media). This definitional problem has been around for a long time and is not unique to the United States: A 25-year-old study comparing escape rates among the various Australian states concluded that interstate differences in defining and counting escapes made it impossible to make accurate comparisons (Victoria Social Welfare Department, 1977).

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16
Number of Escapes (in thousands)

14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998

Year Corrections Yearbook ACA Directory NCRP

Figure 1: Number of Prison Escapes 1988 to 1998. NOTE: ACA = American Correctional Association; NCRP = National Corrections Reporting Program.

Although the total counts indicate reliability problems among the surveys, the percentage of all escapes that are AWOLs or walkaways is fairly consistent between the two surveys that disaggregate the incidents: From Corrections Yearbook, it was 88.25%; for Corrections Compendium, it was 88.75%. A separate study covering the same period of time reported that 85% of escapes in New York State were from minimum-security facilities (Lyons, 1999). Given the consensus of findings, it is reasonable to presume that the average of the two survey figures, 88.5%, provides a realistic estimate of the number of walkaways represented in each of the aggregate escape counts. Because the NCRP, ACA Directory, and Corrections Yearbook databases are updated annually, they provide a longitudinal perspective on whether the number of prison escapes has changed from year to year. Escape counts for the 11-year span from 1988 to 1998 are displayed in Figure 1. As all three surveys were ostensibly measuring the same phenomenon during the period, one might expect that a statistically significant correlation would exist between the three surveys when represented in a time series. Although the annual counts may differ because of definitional issues, response rates, or other factors, the trends marked by each survey should correlate with one another through time. However, this does not consistently prove to be the case: The correlation between the Corrections Yearbook and NCRP annual counts is significant (coefficient = .621; p = .021, one-tailed test) and approaches significance between the NCRP and the ACA Directory (coefficient = .506; p = .056) but is not statistically significant between the ACA Directory and Corrections Yearbook (coefficient = .391; p = .117).

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Escape rate per 100 inmates

1.60 1.40 1.20 1.00 0.80 0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 Year

Figure 2:

Annual Escape Rates of U.S. Prisoners, 1988 to 1998.

However, by averaging the annual escape counts recorded in the various annual surveys and dividing by the corresponding annual size of the correctional population (as reported by BJS), we can obtain a standardized best estimate of the escape rate throughout time. Although prison population in the United States grew exponentially over the study periodnearly tripling from 627,600 inmates in 1988 to 1,816,931 in 1998 (Beck, 2000)the prison escape rate declined considerably during the periodfrom 1.4 escapes per 100 inmates in 1998 to 0.4 in 1998 (Figure 2).
WHY THE DECLINE?

Possible explanations for the apparent decline in the escape rate can be explored from at least three levels of analysis: individual, organizational, and political. On the individual level, changes in key characteristics of the correctional population throughout time could affect escape rates. According to the classification literature reviewed earlier, the most escape-prone inmates are young, male, White, and property offenders. Thus, changes in the prison population that include a decreasing proportion of White inmates, an aging prisoner population, more women, and a lower proportion of property offenders would tend to depress the rate of prison escapes. According to Beck and Mumola (1999), all four elements were occurring during the study period. Between 1990 and 1998, the female population in prisons increased by 92%, whereas the population of men increased by 67%. During the same period, the percentage of the prison population represented by Whites dropped from 50.1% to 47.9%, and the percentage of property offenders declined by 3% (from 25% to 22%). Using a slightly narrower time span, the BJS report also observes that the number of inmates age 34 and younger decreased from 65.8% of the population in 1991 to 56.8% in 1997.

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An analysis of 1998 NCRP prison release data provides some interesting insights into these individual factors related to escape. In a cross-tabulation of type of release (split into the two categories of escape-related and nonescape-related releases), with age, race, sex, and committing offense, chisquare tests yield significant relationships between escape and both age and committing offense (p < .01) but nonsignificant relationships between escape and race or sex. Younger offenders (those younger than 34) and inmates committed for a property offense escape at a significantly greater frequency than older inmates (age 35 and older) and inmates committed for violent offenses or drug charges. Thus, as the correctional population ages and the representation of property offenders decreases, the pool of potential escapees is diminished. An interesting finding was that Black inmates appear to have reached parity with White inmates in regard to escape probability: Where prior studies have found Black inmates to escape less frequently than White inmates, this difference disappears in the 1998 NCRP release data. Similarly, according to 1998 data, women are now just as likely to escape as men. At present, we will leave the potentially intriguing reasons why this change has occurred for future exploration. Factors operating at the organizational level of analysis may also account in part for a decreasing escape rate. First, the prison building boom of the late 20th century brought many new prisons online. It is reasonable to assume that security technology in newer prisons is more dependable and less subject to breakdown than older systems and that, generally, new prisons tend to be less escape prone than older facilities. A comparison of the age of prisons counted in the Census of Adult Correctional Facilities for 1984 and 1995 (the census years immediately prior to the study period and the latest one available) indicates that the average age of U.S. prisons was 34.8 years old in 1984 (N = 903) but had dropped to 30.4 years old in 1995 (N = 1,073). Although small, the difference amounts to a 12.6% drop in facility age and likely influences the declining escape rates. Second, changes in security level distribution within the stock of U.S. prisons may have influenced escape rates. We have seen, for example, that 88.5% of all escapes occur in minimum-security facilities. If prisons were becoming more secure, the number of escapes could be expected to go down. A comparison of 1984 and 1995 prison census data indicates that this is indeed the case (Table 2). A total of 170 new prisons were added between 1984 and 1995, an increase of 18.8%. Yet there were dramatic changes in the distribution of prisons by security level during the period. The number of prisons with a maximum-security rating increased by 63.3%, and medium-security prisons

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1984
Maximum Medium Minimum None Total 177 273 453 903

1995
289 430 354 3 1,073

% Change
63.3 57.5 21.9 18.8

SOURCE: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1995); U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1995) (state prisons only). U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2000).

increased by 57.5%, but the number of minimum-security-rated prisons declined by 21.9%. There were 99 fewer prisons rated minimum security in 1995 than in 1984. Although the source data do not account for the decline, it is assumed that the drop was due to upgrading the security level of many minimum-security facilities rather than facility closures. As a group, state prisons in the United States became increasingly more secure during the study period and more difficult to escape from, and this factor contributes to a declining escape rate throughout the country. At the political level of analysis, a number of factors may contribute to declining escape rates. For example, state-to-state differences in the penalties for escape, severity of criminal sanctions, access to alternative sentencing options for property offenders, and state parole policy could account for differences in escape rate. These factors are beyond the scope of the present analysis but should be taken into account in further research.
CAPTURES

Fictional tales of successful escapes from prisonfrom The Count of Monte Cristo to The Shawshank Redemptionform a familiar storyline in popular culture. To be sure, there are actual cases of escaped cons living out a life on the lam. But truth is much less kind than fiction when it comes to most prison escapes: The odds of getting away are decidedly unfavorable. Among the escape information sources, the ACA Directory and Corrections Yearbook include specific counts of captures in their surveys, whereas the NCRP simply records the reason for each inmates admission to prison, including whether he or she was on escape or AWOL status at the time. Unfortunately, the capture data are more problematic than the escape data. There is no specific reconciliation of the list of captures with the list of escapees in any of the surveys. Inmates admitted or readmitted to prison while on

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escape status in any given year may include inmates who were fugitives from prior years or from other jurisdictions. Thus, it is possible for the number of captures to exceed the number of escapes in a given year (in fact, this occurs in NCRP data for 1997 and 1998). Unlike the escape databases, among which there was some degree of reliability, neither the absolute number of captures nor the ratio of captures to escapes correlates at a level of significance among the three surveys. Notwithstanding their limitations, the data from these surveys are the best currently available and provide a reasonable clue to how many prisoners get away with escaping. During the time period 1988 to 1998, the mean capture rate reported in the ACA Directory was 74.7%; for Corrections Yearbook, it was 68.4%. Although the NCRP does not specifically count captures, the questionnaire explicitly instructs staff filling out the survey to only use the escape category for prisoners departing the facility if they also use the escape category to note the inmates reason for admission to the prison. Thus, comparing the number of inmates admitted to prison in a given year as a result of a prior escape with those known to have escaped during the same year provides a proxy for capture. For the period 1988 to 1998, the percentage of inmates admitted to prison because of a prior escape is 80.4% of the total number of inmates who escaped (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000). Averaging the mean rates for all three surveys yields a grand mean of 74.5%, a percentage that represents the number of all escaped prisoners that are captured. Although the figure may seem low at first blush, it is attenuated somewhat by security level differences among prisons. The Corrections Yearbook survey distinguishes escapes and captures by prison security level. When summarized during the study time frame, the data suggest that the capture rate improves as security level increases: 68.9% from work release programs, 83.7% from low-security and minimumsecurity facilities, and 92.2% from medium-security and high-security facilities. According to a study of recidivism of prisoners released in 1994 (Langan & Levin, 2002), 44.1% were rearrested, 21.5% were reconvicted, and 10.4% were returned to prison with a new sentence within 1 year of release. It is reasonable to believe that escaped prisoners fare no better than those released legitimately and that many who have evaded capture are rearrested and returned to prison on other charges within a year of escaping. It is also likely, given the state of prison incident recordkeeping, that these returning escapees are not counted as returning from escape or AWOL status. Thus, the capture rates reported by the three surveys should be considered conservative estimates.

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The news media provide another public record of prison escapes in the United States. In reporting on the criminal justice system in general, the news media show a marked preference for police, arrest, and courtroom stories and tend to devote very little time and attention to news about corrections (Doyle & Ericson, 1996). According to Chermak (1998), media focus on the criminal justice system appears to be frontloaded, with the greatest attention on the reporting and discovery of crime (18.7% of stories), followed by stories on arrest (15.4%) and arraignment (13.3%). Media attention continues to taper off as an offender is processed through the system: 9.1% of stories cover trials, 7.3% report on sentencing, and so forth. By the time an offender lands in prison, media attention approaches zero: 2.3% of stories cover appeals and only 1.1% report on release from prison. Other studies of media coverage of corrections found similarly low-priority coverage given to prisons. Graber (1980) found that only 2% of the crime stories in the Chicago Tribune dealt with corrections, whereas Dussuyer (1979) counted only 4.3% of Toronto criminal justice news stories focused on the prison system. However, prison escape reporting differs from general reporting on corrections in at least one important dimension: Both press and prison administrations share a common interest in the initial reporting of prison escapes. Although correctional authorities may exercise considerable control over information about internal prison incidents, such as assaults and disturbances, this control begins to dissolve once an escapee leaves the property of the prison. Many prisons have implemented automatic systems for notifying neighborhood residents whenever an escape occurs. Escapes also prompt notification of state and local law enforcement agencies, and this in turn becomes public information, available to the press. Prison staff may contact the press voluntarily to solicit help from the public in apprehending escapees. And the press is prone to reporting intrinsically dramatic events, such as prison escapes, which are potentially interesting to consumers. A search of all news sources in the Lexis-Nexis database for the 2-year period (1997 to 1998) yielded 4,248 news stories that matched the search terms prison and escape. This total included many duplicate stories, several accounts of prison escapes from outside the United States, and a host of articles immaterial to the study (e.g., historical references to infamous escapes, references to prison escapes in films and fiction, and stories of individuals who had escaped a prison term). Pruning the collection of these stories left a total of 906 press narratives about distinct prison escapes in the United States during the 2-year period: 450 from 1997 and 456 from 1998, an average of about 40 escapes per month.

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The collection of 906 news stories was inclusive of escapes from minimum-security facilities and other minor escape incidents. Nationally, the press reported on 6.0% of the total number of escapes in 1997 and 9.2% of the total escapes in 1998 (based on the mean number of escapes reported by the three surveys in 1997 and 1998). The extent of coverage on escapes by the news media, although low, appears notably higher than the scope of corrections reporting observed in previous studies. By eliminating walkaways from work camps, prerelease centers, and cases not involving a breach of prison security, the final cut yielded 44 incidents in 1997 and, coincidentally, 44 incidents in 1998. Approximately 90% of the newspaper stories in both years involved walkaway-type escapes. This is in line with the estimate obtained from the national databases88.5%. The final set of 88 incidents includes only nonwalkaway prison escapes that were reported in the news media during the 1997 to 1998 biennium. The news accounts identified in this study provide much greater detail than can be found in the statistical databases and enable us to make some interesting observations. The 88 escape incidents occurred in 79 separate prison facilities. Seven of the prisons in the database recorded more than 1 escape during the 2-year period (2 prisons had 3 separate escapes; 5 had 2 incidents). A total of 35 jurisdictions are represented in the group. Texas led all jurisdictions in number of escapes with 13, and California came in second with 7 escapes. These rankings are consistent with California and Texass distinction of having the two largest state prison populations in the country. There were a total of 135 inmates involved in the 88 incidents. In 60 of these (68.2%), the escape involved only one inmate; In 21 incidents (23.9%), two inmates left the facility together. Thus, 81 of the 88 incidents (92.1%) involved one or two inmates. There were only 7 escapes in which three or more inmates left the prison together. The largest group escaping at once was six inmates, and this occurred three times in the study sample. As has been noted in prior research and in the present study, inmate characteristics that consistently correlate with escape include age and committing offense. Although race and gender were less predictive of escape in the NCRP data, the body of research suggests that these factors are important correlates as well. Age, committing offense, and gender are regularly reported by the press in the escape accounts, whereas race is reported only sporadically. The inmates involved in this group of escapes tended to be young men. Age was reported on 117 of the 135 escapees (86.7%); these inmates averaged 27.3 years old. Only 5 of the escapees in this sample were women, just 3.7%. Committing offense was provided on 127 of the escapees (94.1%). Although prior research on escapee profile and the current analysis of NCRP

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Frequency
Murder Rape, sex assault, and sex offense against minor Armed robbery Aggravated assault or assault Robbery Burglary Theft, larceny, or forgery Drug offenses Probation or parole violation Other Total 42 7 10 5 10 14 14 7 4 14 127

Percentage
33.1 5.5 7.9 3.9 7.9 11.0 11.0 5.5 3.2 11.0 100.0

release data suggest that escaped convicts tend to be property offenders, the escapees in the present group had considerably more violent criminal backgrounds than those previously studied. Violent offenders account for the majority (58%) of escapees in this group. Forty-two inmates (a third of the sample) were serving time for murder; another 32 inmates (25%) were convicted of other crimes against persons, including aggravated assault, armed robbery, rape, and sexual offences against children (see Table 3.). Only 5.5% of escapees were convicted for drug offenses, and the remainder (36%) was serving time for property crimes or technical violations. This may be an artifact of the focus on secure facility escapes as we have purposely eliminated nonsecure facility escapes and other walkaways from consideration in this database. Thus, the current sample may be composed of a higher proportion of violent offenders than was the case in previous studies. Nevertheless, prison escapees in this group appear to be a more dangerous lot than those studied previously. A racial description of the escapee(s) was provided in only 18 of the 88 escape incidents (20.5% of the time) and on only 22 of a total of 135 escapees (16.3%). Many news media outlets appear to consciously follow a policy of not publishing the race of escapees. Given the extent of missing data, it is not possible to make inferences on race as a factor in escape. Despite their serious committing offenses, the number of offenders who committed offenses while escaping is proportionally small. Escapees used violence against prison staff in only 6 of the escape incidents in this study (8.3% of the escapes), and none of the incidents resulted in life-threatening injuries. Although the risk of injury to staff is low, it is higher than Lilliss (1994) finding of only five correctional staff injured in 822 escapes. Once outside the prison, some 6.3% of the offenders (a total of eight) committed

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TABLE 4: Method of Escape

Frequency
Cut or scaled fence or perimeter Escaped from nonsecure area Used physical force against staff Hid in vehicle Forged documents Breached perimeter from outside Tunneled Other Total 32 19 6 6 3 2 1 3 72

Percentage
44.4 26.4 8.3 8.3 4.2 2.8 1.4 4.2 100.0

additional crimes in the community. However, their crimes were considerably more serious than previous research has identified. The eight offenders in this subset were involved in the following: burglary on a residence, assault on an elderly woman, two bank robberies, hostage taking of a middle-aged married couple, kidnapping, vehicular manslaughter, and murder. The news reports provided information on how 72 of the 88 escapes (82%) were accomplished. More than 70% of prison escapes involve cutting or scaling perimeter fencing or slipping away while in a nonsecure area of the prison (e.g., on a work detail outside the secure perimeter). The most common escape scenario involves using a wire-cutting device stolen from a maintenance shop within the prison or simply taking advantage of a temporary lapse in staff attention (see Table 4). Many of these escapes involved exploiting observed weaknesses in staffing or technology. In one case, escapees identified a malfunctioning motion detector between the perimeter fences by repeatedly throwing objects over the fence and checking to see which detectors sounded an alarm. In another case, escapees observed that during staff shift changes, repeated opening and closing of a secure gate touched off false alarms that were hastily reset by an inattentive control panel monitor. They chose this exact moment to cut through another area distant from all the staff activity. In other cases, escapees waited for foggy or rainy nights to foil efforts to track them. In six cases, inmates hid in delivery or maintenance vehicles authorized to be inside the prison and literally hitched a ride out. In two incidents, inmates used the proverbial bed sheet rope to shinny down to freedom. And in what was arguably the most embarrassing escape for correctional authorities, one inmate disappeared while role-playing an escapee during a dog team training exercise.

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Only a handful of escapes (8%) involved ingenious or sophisticated planning. In three of the escapes, inmates used phony or forged documentation to fool prison staff into letting them out: One swapped ID tags with an inmate approved for release, another forged legal documents approving his release, and the third faked a terminal illness using forged medical records and tricked authorities into releasing him to the care of an imaginary physician. In two of the escapes, inmates relied on outside confederates to break through the perimeter fence in stolen vehicles. And in truth-is-stranger-thanfiction style, a group of six inmates escaped by digging a 64-foot tunnel that passed under the prison wall to an unmanned prison warehouse on the outside of the secure compound. Amazingly, the inmates had accumulated an impressive array of tools and materials in the tunnel: blueprints to the prison, 250 feet of extension cords, an industrial drill, an electric saw capable of cutting through rebar in the concrete floor of the warehouse, a 20-ton hydraulic jack, and a two-way radio tuned into the frequency used by security personnel. For the sake of perspective, it is important to note that all of the escaped prisoners involved in these 72 incidents were subsequently captured, most within a few days of the escape. The longest holdout lasted 6 months, but he took his own life when his capture was imminent. CONCLUSION Because of jurisdictional differences in recordkeeping and definitions of escape, national escape totals and escape rates should be considered best estimates rather than precise counts. Nonetheless, an analysis of 11 years of prison escape data from three national databases suggests that about 3% of all inmates escape from prison at some time while serving their sentence and that, annually, about 1.4% of the correctional population escapes. About 88.5% of all escapes come from low-security-level prisons, whereas approximately 11.5% of escapes involve inmates in medium-security and highsecurity prisons. Among escapees from the more secure prisons, more than 92% are captured and returned to prison within a year of escaping. Prison escape rates have slowly dropped even as the U.S. incarceration rate has soared in the late 20th century, in part because of an overall increase in the security level of new prisons, a decrease in the proportion of property offenders incarcerated, and a gradual aging of the correctional population. The aging of the population is largely a consequence of political and legislative processes (such as truth-in-sentencing laws) rather than changing characteristics of either inmates or the prisons in which they reside. The identifica-

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tion of contributing factors at different levels of analysis suggests that subsequent research into prison incidents should include contextual, multilevel variables in the research design rather than simply individual-level static and dynamic factors. The vast majority of escapes from secure custody, 92%, involves inmates acting alone or in pairs. Most escapes involve simple plans and the exploitation of inattentive staff or defective security technology. For the most part, escapes from secure custody do not involve the use of violence against prison staff (only 8.3% involved violence), and only 6.3% of escapees commit additional crimes in the community in the course of escaping. However, the crimes committed by escapees in the past decade appear to be more serious and violent than those described in earlier studies. The reported increase in violence suggests that escapees may be becoming more desperate as changing levels of security have made prisons increasingly more difficult to breach. The multilevel complexity of variables affecting escape, including the extent of staff responsibility in enabling them, suggests that the routine activities approach (Cohen & Felson, 1979) may serve as an appropriate perspective for better understanding the escape phenomenon. The routine activities approach has been used in the past to examine inmate assaults on prison guards (Marquart, Mullings, Morris, & Toch, 2000). The perspective involves a shift in focus away from characteristics of the individual offender toward greater focus on the people and places circumscribing a criminal event. Prison escape is a statutorily proscribed criminal behavior that can be viewed within the routine activities context of a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardians. In revising the original routine activities approach, Felson (1995) elaborated a typology of guardianship that includes guardians who monitor suitable targets, handlers who monitor likely offenders, and managers who monitor places (Brunet, 2002). The responsibility of persons assuming each of these roles may be personal (e.g., family and friends of inmates), assigned as part of the job (correctional officers), diffuse (prison staff such as vocational shop teachers), and general (neighbors of the prison). The news media narrative accounts of escapes reviewed in the study suggest that persons at each of these levels of responsibility all play a role in whether escapes occur and in how promptly escapees are captured. REFERENCES
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Anson, R. H., & Hartnett, C. M. (1983). Correlates of escape: A preliminary assessment of Georgia Prisons. Criminal Justice Review, 8(1), 3842. Association of State Correctional Administrators. (2002, July). Key indicators of ASCA performance standards with counting rules (working paper). Middletown, CT: Author. Beck, A. J. (1998). State and federal corrections information systems: An inventory of data elements and an assessment of reporting capabilities. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Beck, A. J. (2000). Prisoners in 1999. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Beck, A. J., & Mumola, C. J. (1999). Prisoners in 1998. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Brunet, J. R. (2002). Discouragement of crime through civil remedies: An application of a reformulated routine activities theory. Western Criminology Review, 4(1), 6879. Camp, G. M., & Camp, C. G. (1988-1999). Corrections yearbook (published annually). Middletown, CT: Criminal Justice Institute. Campbell, G., Porporino, F. J., & Wevrick, L. (1985). Characteristics of inmates involved in prison incidents: Phase 1. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Ministry of the Solicitor General of Canada. Campbell, H. G. (1983). Analysis of prisoner escape potential: A predictive modeling profile (doctoral dissertation, The Claremont Graduate University). ProQuest Digital Dissertations, AAT 8321043. Carlson, K. A. (1990). Prison escapes and community consequences: Results of a case study. Federal Probation, 54(2), 3643. Centre for Research, Evaluation, and Social Assessment. (1996). Escape pressures: Inside views of the reasons for prison escapes. Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Ministry of Justice. Chard-Wierschem, D. J. (1995). Comparison of temporary release absconders and nonabsconders: 1993-1994. Albany: New York State Department of Correctional Services. Chermak, S. M. (1998). Police, courts, and corrections in the media. In F. Bailey & D. Hale (Eds.), Popular culture, crime, and justice (pp. 87-99). Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth. Cohen, L. E., & Felson, M. (1979). Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review, 44(4), 558608. Cowles, E. L. (1981). A study to explore race as it relates to correctional institution escape behavior (doctoral dissertation, the Florida State University). ProQuest Digital Dissertations, AAT 8118517. Culp, R. F., & Bracco, E. (2005). Examining prison escapes and routine activities theory. Corrections Compendium, 30(3), 1-5, 25-27. Davis, S. P. (1992). Prison escapes and homicides down. Corrections Compendium, 17(11), 7 15. Doyle, A., & Ericson, R. V. (1996). Breaking into prison: News sources and correctional institutions. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 38(2), 155190. Duncan, D. F., & and Ellis, T. R. (1973). Situational variables associated with prison escapes. American Journal of Correction, 35(3), 2930. Dussuyer, I. (1979). Crime news: A study of 40 Ontario newspapers (working paper). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. Felson, M. (1995). Those who discourage crime. In J. E. Eck & D. Weisburd (Eds.), Crime and place: Crime prevention studies (Vol. 4, pp. 53-66). Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.

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Fisher, K. L. (1977). The determination of some personality characteristics of women who escape from prison (doctoral dissertation, University of Washington). ProQuest Digital Dissertations, AAT 7718339. Gillman, T. J. (2002, March 17). O brother, where art thou? The Dallas Morning News, p. A1. Graber, D. (1980). Crime news and the public. New York: Praeger. Haisted, J. B. (1985). Why Black prisoners seldom try to escape from American penal institutions: A humanistic perspective. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 1(2), 4866. Johnson, K. (1998, December 3). Keeping inmates in prison. Christian Science Monitor, p. 2. Johnston, J. C., Porporino, F. J., & Sturrock, R. C. (1991). Literature review on the factors related to escape from correctional institutions. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Research and Statistics Branch, Correctional Service Canada. Langan, P. L., & Levin, D. J. (2002). Recidivism of prisoners released in 1994. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Lee-Jan, J. (1980). Overcrowding and inmate behavior: Some preliminary findings. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 7(3), 293301. Lillis, J. (1994). Prison escapes and violence remain down. Corrections Compendium, 19(6), 6 9. Lyons, J. A. (1999). Inmate escape incidents: 1994-1998. Albany: New York State Department of Correctional Services. Marquart, J. W., Mullings, J., Morris, J., Jr., & Toch, H. (2000, November). Inmate on prison guard assaults: A test of the routine activities perspective. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Los Angeles. McCorkle, R. C., Miethe, T. D., & Drass, K. A. (1995). The roots of prison violence: A test of the deprivation, management, and not-so-total institution models. Crime & Delinquency, 41(3), 317331. Murphy, T. H. (1984). Prediction of minimum security walkaways. Lansing: Michigan Department of Corrections. Nacci, P. L., Teitelbaum, H. E., & Prather, J. (1977). Violence in federal prisons: The effect of population density on misconduct. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Quinsey, V. L., Coleman, G., & Jones, B. (1997). Proximal antecedents of eloping and reoffending among supervised mentally disordered offenders. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 12(6), 794813. Sabol, W. J. (1998). Inventory of data elements in state and federal corrections information systems [data file; ICPSR version]. Washington, DC: Urban Institute [producer]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999. Sandhu, H. S. (1996). A profile of murderer escapees. Journal of the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Research Consortium, 3. Retrieved September 18, 2003, from the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Research Consortium Web site: http://www.doc.state.ok.us/DOCS/OCJRC/OCJRC96/ Ocjrc115.htm Scott, N. A., Mount-Michael, K., & Duffy, R. (1977). MMPI and demographic correlates and predictors of female prison escape. Criminal Justice & Behavior, 4(3), 285300. Shaffer, C. E., Bluoin, D., & Pettigrew, C. G. (1985). Assessment of prison escape risk. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 1(1), 4248. Sundin, L. (1971). The dangerousness of goalbreakers. Stockholm: University of Stockholm Institute of Criminal Science. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1984). Census of state adult correctional facilities, 1984 [Data file] (Conducted by U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. ICPSR ed.). Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1997.

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U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1995). Census of state and federal adult correctional facilities, 1995 [Data file]. Conducted by U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1998. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2000). National corrections reporting program,1988-1998: [UNITED STATES] [Data file]. Conducted by U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. 2nd ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 2000. Verlag, F. E. (1978). Flight from prison: An empirical study of escapes from open correctional institutions. Washington, DC: National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Victoria Social Welfare Department. (1977). Interstate comparisons of prison escape and offense rates, and the comparative costs of imprisonment. Melbourne, Australia: Victoria Social Welfare Department. Richard F. Culp is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He received his doctorate from the City University of New York. His most recent publications appear in Criminal Justice Policy Review, Corrections Compendium, and Journal of Public Affairs Education. His research interests include the criminal justice policy process and the management of public-private partnerships in criminal justice.

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