When the wind blows hard enough at Pennsylvania's SCI Camp Hill, the sirens that alert the surrounding community of prison escapes are barely audible. And even when residents are able to detect the sirens, they are still left wondering what type of prisoner escaped and how they should respond.

In the next few months, this problem will be solved thanks to a partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and the Community Alert Network (CAN), a telephone emergency notification company that will soon make 250 calls simultaneously to residents within a two-mile radius of the prison when an escape occurs.

Although the state's prisons will retain their siren alerts, CAN's technology replaces a slower, manual telephone alert system that the Department of Corrections previously used to contact residents one-by-one.

"It's important for us to let everyone know what's going on quickly," said Susan McNaughton, spokesperson for the Department of Corrections. "If [residents] see fire trucks driving down their road to the prison, they should know why upfront."

How CAN Works

According to McNaughton, each institution will draft a one-year, $1,200-contract with CAN over the next several months. Since the company manages their own calling centers in Nevada and New York, the prisons are not required to purchase or lease equipment.

In order to activate an emergency alert, authorized prison personnel must call one of CAN's 24-hour hotlines and verify an established password. Next, the prison details the incident, selects geographic locations to receive calls and records a voice message or selects a pre-recorded message.

Immediately after each calling session, CAN provides a report to the prison, which includes information such as which numbers were called and the status of each call.
"The report is nice to have in the end because, once the situation has evolved, people could come to us and say we didn't notify them in time. This way, we have a hard record to prove we did," McNaughton said.

Aside from producing a final report, CAN President Kenneth Baechel said there are several other aspects of the network that make it one of the best methods of emergency alert.

"For one, we get the word out quickly because the centers are computer-operated," he said. "But we can also wake people up in the middle of the night [unlike sirens], because people will wake up to answer their phones."

Community Approved

Like SCI Camp Hill, many of Pennsylvania's other institutions are only steps away from business and residential areas, where McNaughton said neighbors practically "grow up with the institution."

According to Marie Thumma, who works at a retirement home down the street from CSI Camp Hill, the new alert system has put her at ease.

"We [at Woods at Cedar Run] absolutely feel safer because Camp Hill is a senior retirement community with very vulnerable people," she said.

Woods, alone, consists of 147 apartments, and two neighboring buildings are also retirement complexes.

"It would be very easy for a prisoner to escape and to come to one of the complexes around here to hide or take people hostage," Thumma said. "So it's very crucial that they notify us, so we can do a lock-down and make sure everyone is safe."

The Trial

Before establishing the system statewide, the Department of Corrections piloted CAN at SCI Camp Hill, SCI Pittsburgh and SCI Green.

Tia Merdian, design manager of Kathie's Christmas & Collectibles, remembered receiving test calls at the shop located two miles from SCI Camp Hill.

"I think we all felt really good about it," she said. "Communication with the prison is very important, particularly because we're a fair-sized business with 20 to 25 employees and always have a lot of people in the store."

In the case of a real escape, Merdian said she would hope the alert provided a physical description and a brief background on the prisoner.

"We should know what we're in for, like whether the prisoner is violent or passive," she said.

Although CAN is still working with security at the Department of Corrections to finalize the details of the telephone message, McNaughton said it will include "as much information about the individual as possible."

A Few Obstacles

While the new alert system promises to better inform residents about escapes, the Department of Corrections has a few concerns about the system's overall effectiveness.

One worry is the presence of telemarketing devices installed on residents' phones.

"If residents have chosen to block certain calls, it means they might not receive the emergency alerts from our network," Baechel said.

CAN does not have the authority to override blocked telephone numbers, meaning individuals who choose not to receive non-solicited calls must rely on siren alerts or local authorities to inform them about an escape.

Telephone numbers that are unlisted in local directories are also posing a problem.

McNaughton recommended that residents who live near one of the state's prisons contact the institution personally to make certain that their telephone numbers are included and are up-to-date in the CAN directory.

CAN Outside of Pennsylvania

For the most part, however, CAN has been a successful alert method for prison escapes, according to Baechel, who estimated that seven states use CAN in their prisons. Most prisons draft contracts with CAN individually, so it is difficult to keep track of which states implement the network in all of their prisons, he said.

The Vermont Department of Corrections, for example, partnered with CAN around five years ago and has just renewed its contract for another year.

"The primary job of corrections is public safety, and the CAN system has a high probability of fulfilling this job," said John Murphy, the department's hearings administrator for public safety.

Murphy said the department signed with CAN after a prisoner escaped from the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport.

"The telephone tree alert system at Northern State did not work satisfactorily; there were too many points where the system could break down," he said.

After the incident, Murphy said a local neighborhood committee collaborated with the DOC to explore different methods of alert and decided that CAN was the best option.

But for some states, like Georgia, going electronic doesn't seem like the best option.
Rick Jacobs, the director of special operations at Georgia's Department of Corrections, said that, in the event of a prison escape, state facilities rely on local law enforcement to notify residents. It is also standard procedure to notify the department's public information office, which handles telephone inquiries and alerts local media outlets.

"To be honest, our opinion is that prison escapes are very important and critical, and we want them to be handled by actual people rather than computers to make sure the right contacts are made," Jacobs said.

A Growing Industry

In spite of this, emergency alert businesses are growing.

CAN started out as the "Missing Child Network" 23 years ago, and then became the world's first telephonic emergency notification service. The New York-based network now provides services to more than 600 communities and facilities in the US and Canada.

According to Baechel, there are only about six other companies that specialize in the emergency alert field. However, he said more businesses are popping up in the industry because of a recent concentration on homeland security.

As a result, companies are offering their services at very competitive prices. And after the year is up, McNaughton said Pennsylvania's prisons might allow other emergency alert companies to bid for their business.

Resources:

To contact the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, visit: www.cor.state.pa.us

To contact the Vermont Department of Corrections, visit: www.doc.state.vt.us

To contact the Georgia Department of Corrections, visit: www.dcor.state.ga.us

For more information about Community Alert Network, visit: www.can-intl.com