Without guards around to keep order and surveillance on prisoners, inmates left to their own devices and powered by the need to survive will, on a large scale, defeat mechanical locks and barriers and access the outside world.
With any collapse of the electrical grid, which powers most prison locks and access systems, obstacles to prisoners freedom will largely cease to work making it much, much easier for inamtes to escape.
This threat of prisons suddenly dispersing their inmates and the supporting network of gangs is a discussion I recently had with friends of mine located about half way across the country. We discussed counter-measures include the following:
1. Know where the nearest prisons (and jails) are. Not just within a 20 miles radius but a much larger radius say 500 miles or even more depending upon the other factors. Know what type of prisoners these facilities hold,...white collar criminals, hard core felons, federal high value criminals, etc. This is important because understanding the potential threat helps prepare you.
2. Are there natural routes or lines of communication such as interstate highway, state highways, farm to market roads, and/or other natural channelization which would drive escaping inmates to your area? You should have already did a terrain analysis on potential refugee routes - this is same type of study.
3. Depending upon the stage of the collapse upon the prisoner release/escape and the amount of news they have received relating to the economic conditions, security situation and depth of the collapse, a percentage of the inmates may not be driven into the larger population centers. I wouldn't. Would you? Wouldn't you look for safer suburbs or rural areas where the ratio of law enforcement is much less and the potential rivalry for food and other material is less?
4. I have written before about the potential danger from organized gangs - because of their organized structure and greater chance,....... much greater chance of having absolutely no hesitation to kill. Some of these inmates will naturally bind together as well. Some are already organized in prison as gangs, be it the Mexican Mafia, White Supremists,Neo-Nazis or Black militants. They won't be so well equipped, weapons wise, but that would be overcome with a half day on the outside. Transportation as well would not be an issue - they wil simply kill those weaker than themselves for anything they want.
Again, you cannot talk about inmates in prisons without talking about street gangs. Each state should be producing a yearly Gang report. You may want to see if you can locate one on the web. The stats will amaze you, and should probably scare you as well.
Perhaps California and Texas have the largest gang and prison populations. I could not get California's data before I wanted to post this, but the statistics from Texas are that more than 50% of the prison population are serving a sentence for a violent crime: including homicide - 14%; robbery - 25%; and, assault - 12%.
The four biggest violent gangs number almost 25,000 in Texas. These are the scum bags counted as full time gang bangers, AND the number of gang bangers in the more than 2,000 gangs in this state number more than 100,000.
According to a organized crime investigator buddy of mine, each gang has some sort of association with the violent Mexican Drug Cartels. The cartels partner with and utilize U.S. based street gangs because of their citizenship status and knowledge of local, state and federal law enforcement personnel and tactics.
You can count on the street gangs with their level of organization, weaponry and odd familal type loyalty will certainly assist in breaking their members out of prison if/when the collapse drives the institutional security away. Be prepared.
