Healthcare Facilities, Police Grapple With Prisoner Escapes

IHSS Foundation study highlights incident frequency and reporting shortcomings. Report calls for Clery-type law to be enacted for hospitals.

When Dr. Victoria Mikow-Porto undertook her study of the frequency of prisoner escapes from healthcare facilities at the behest of the International Healthcare Security & Safety (IHSS) Foundation, even this veteran researcher was surprised by what she found.  In a white paper commissioned by the IHSS Foundation and presented at the recent International Association For Healthcare Security & Safety (IAHSS) Annual General Meeting in Toronto, she shines a spotlight on a problem that seems all too common in some ways, yet taboo.

She points out this issue has been lurking for decades. When the Supreme Court agreed with prisoner petitioners  in 1976 (Estelle v. Gamble) that depriving prisoners of medical care in correctional facilities constituted “cruel and unusual punishment”, it did not anticipate a plethora of unintended consequences when it ruled that correctional facilities “must provide necessary medical care to incarcerated individuals” and “the deliberate indifference to serious medical needs is prohibited.”

This resulted in vastly increasing amount of medical services provided to prisoners in correctional facilities. But as economies stalled in in the decades that followed, correctional systems downsized or eliminated altogether onsite medical care. This meant that correctional facilities had to turn to public or private hospitals and other healthcare facilities to provide medical care to prisoners.

With the prison population burgeoning from 1.1 million in 1990 to over 2.3 million today, medical treatment of prisoners outside prisons has become an everyday experience. “The Supreme Court decision opened a floodgate that healthcare facilities today are struggling with more than ever,” she says, citing the disproportionately high levels of acute and chronic medical and mental disorders among the prison population, along with the additional burdens associated with aging prisoners. She adds that the public at large has little or no idea of how the increase in numbers of forensic prisoners at healthcare treatment facilities – with corresponding increase in potential for escape – can affect them. “There’s a whole world out there that people don’t see or understand.”

Mikow-Porto identified 99 attempted and completed healthcare facility prisoner escapes, from reports in the media between April 1, 2010, and April 1, 2011. This translates to about 8.4 incidents per month, or 2.1 weekly. Given that there are no baseline data on prisoner escapes from hospitals, the researcher does not know whether this is a high or low frequency. She admits she was surprised by the number of escapes. Mikow-Porto is also convinced that the escape statistics may be much higher since she relied on Internet articles, which have a short shelf life and hospitals, fearing liability, are not required to report such incidents. The researcher finds the situation frustrating, “if you don’t know what’s going on, it’s hard to generate the kind of attention and interventions that will deal with these issues.”

As she states in her study, since the numbers of prisoners who will in the future need medical treatment is escalating, it is critical for the healthcare industry to understand the conditions under which prisoner escapes occur and what can be done to prevent them. Her research reveals that about half the escapes result in injuries, and the majority of these instances include assault on the correctional or hospital security officers accompanying the prisoner. Also reported were rare cases of injury to hospital staff or other patients, kidnapping of visitors, and car thefts from visitors and third parties living in the vicinity. Two fatalities were documented.

If you appreciated this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!

Leading in Turbulent Times: Effective Campus Public Safety Leadership for the 21st Century

This new webcast will discuss how campus public safety leaders can effectively incorporate Clery Act, Title IX, customer service, “helicopter” parents, emergency notification, town-gown relationships, brand management, Greek Life, student recruitment, faculty, and more into their roles and develop the necessary skills to successfully lead their departments. Register today to attend this free webcast!

Get Our Newsletters
Campus Safety Conference promo