Prisoners Most Often Escape From Clinical Treatment Areas
To mitigate the risk, it’s important to be aware of the vulnerabilities of the facility. Mikow-Porto’s study indicates the locations of escape attempts vary. Of the 99 incidents reported in the media during the research period, 32 prisoners escaped from the emergency room, 21 from rest rooms, 41 from clinical treatment areas and five from the hospital entrance or parking lot. “There are incidents of prisoners escaping through very public areas, though you usually don’t think about prisoners being treated there or that they might escape,” she points out. (Article continues below.)
Location of Prisoner Escape Incidents
- Emergency room: 14%
- Outside the hospital (e.g. hospital entrance, parking lot, etc.): 17%
- Clinical treatment areas: 39%
- Restrooms: 29%
Information Must Be Shared Between Corrections and Hospital Staff
Security professionals in the hospitals are responsible for the general safety and security of the hospital, staff, visitors and patients, but prisoners are primarily the responsibility of correctional officers, who unlike most hospital security personnel are armed. Sometimes escapes from custody are the result of breakdowns between the agencies involved if information is not shared or procedures are not followed.
“I just read a recent story where someone at a hospital signed off that they were taking custody of a prisoner, who just walked out when his guard left; they couldn’t do this by law,” explains Mikow-Porto. She also points out that if a prisoner escapes, most security personnel are unarmed, so in most cases hospital security can’t really go after them. In her view, this demonstrates how important it is that forensic protocols be in place and followed,—just like for disasters or fire drills,—and that better interagency cooperation is needed.
President of the IHSS Foundation Board Ed Stedman echoes Mikow-Port’s observation. “Each healthcare institution deals with having armed law enforcement officers within their faculties, and each one has their own procedures. Meantime, law enforcement authorities are in charge of the patient and have their procedures. It’s important to try to mitigate issues between the two.”
He points out that there are municipal, state and federal policy issues involved while safeguarding staff, patients and visitors while they are within the facility and when the prisoner is transported.
Escapes Often Involve the Removal of Restraints
The public might well wonder how prisoners who are in shackles and handcuffs can escape. Sometimes they have accomplices; sometimes they get restraints removed for a medical procedure like an MRI, or to visit the restroom, and then escape. In 62 percent of the cases, the restraints had been completely or partially removed.
There was the instance where a handcuffed prisoner stole his guard’s SUV; another where the handcuffed prisoner just walked out of the hospital naked. (He was apprehended outside the entryway by a suspicious security guard.) The scariest one, though, to Mikow-Porto was the recent case of a prisoner overwhelming his police escort, using her Taser on her and stealing her gun which he fired at a person who tried to intervene, and then entered a preschool across the street and took a teacher and 40 children hostage before releasing them and escaping into a nearby neighborhood.
Report Recommends Video, Panic Buttons, Standardized Procedures< /p>
Mikow-Porto’s study includes a number of recommendations to reduce or eliminate prisoner escape incidents from healthcare facilities. Some address improvements to physical plant and equipment, such as installing video cameras and panic buttons. Others point to the need for funding to increase numbers of security personnel as well as the number of hospital professionals with sworn police powers.
