Facility and Inmate Characteristics Associated with the Type of Escape from Correctional Custody

• In Event: Factors Affecting Prison Misconduct

Abstract

Despite their prominence in popular culture, escapes from correctional custody have been neglected in scholarly research in recent decades. This outdated research has inconsistently distinguished “escapes” from analogous events, such as attempted escapes, walkaways, and AWOLs, which has eroded the construct validity of this body of work. In an attempt to overcome these limitations the Corrections Incident Database (CID) usual a central definition of “escape” – a loss of correctional control over an inmate – to create six escape categories. The CID also re-conceptualizes the escape process to include facility, incident, and inmate-level variables. Using these data, the current research employs multinomial logistic regression to identify factors associated with different escape categories. We discuss the implications of our findings for criminological theory and correctional policy.

Authors

• Adam Gregory Fera, CUNY Graduate Center / John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Bryce Elling Peterson, Urban Institute

• Jeff Mellow, John Jay College of Criminal Justice