[CDAT]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Most prisons here in the U.S. built after the 1960s or so, are surrounded only with chain-link fencing. If said perimeter fence isn't monitored and guarded (and/or electrified), there's nothing to stop people from scaling or knocking said fences down. Once outside of the buildings where the inmates are housed- which admittedly might take some doing- I can't imagine it would be that difficult to get past the fencing.

Getting out of the housing units would be trickier, but do y'all really think a couple of hundred men couldn't figure out a way to bust through a few metal doors? It would take time and a lot of muscle power, but it's entirely possible.

Originally Posted by Raellus

I'm not proud of this, but the U.S.A. has the largest prison population in the world, and hundreds of prisons run by states, the federal government, and for-profit corporations (not to mention city and county jails, and juvenile detention centers). There are currently at least a half-a-dozen documentary/"reality" shows on television here in the US about prison life, and fictional depictions of said like Oz and Orange is the New Black. I haven't watched every episode of every one of these many prison shows, but I've seen enough to know that:

In some prisons and jails, inmates in gen-pop spend most of their waking hours hanging around in large groups and are only confined to their cells at night. In particularly overcrowded prisons, they live in open-floor dormitory areas.

In others, large groups of inmates work most of the day in laundries, kitchens, and workshops. Such inmates have access to various tools and machinery that would be quite helpful in getting out (assuming they could get into said work areas. See +).

Your characterization that prisoners can't work together and will only end up killing one another is overly simplistic and calls on the basest of stereotypes*. Prisoners have worked together to build/operate stills, pass notes from door to door in the solitary confinement blocks, develop working economies, and run various criminal enterprises from inside prison walls, and continue to do so as I write (and you read). There's simply no logical explanation for why inmates couldn't work together to break out of prison buildings in a life-or-starve-to-death situation.

*Even in supermax prisons, there are engineers, chemists, construction workers, etc. serving time for murder and other high crimes. These are people with knowledge and skills that would be very useful in breaking out of prison.

Yes, the prisoners would be locked inside prison buildings when the guards leave, but unless they are each locked and/or welded into their individual cells, they will eventually be able to get out.

A. I don't think most sane, ethical people would be OK with having a direct hand in the slow death of dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands of people.

B. Yes, there would be quite a few that would reluctantly do it, and even some would do so enthusiastically with little prompting. But, as soon as the prisoners figure out what's going on, there's going to be bedlam. Welding inmates in their cells is much easier said than done.

+To execute the simplest of breakouts, groups of four men, working in rotating shifts, using a metal bench or some other basic ersatz battering ram, could, with several hours (or even days of work), defeat a steel door.

All of the above is just for the United States. In several third world states (at least), prisons are essentially walled in colonies where inmates are largely left to their own devices. There are guards to make sure that they don't get out, and food deliveries, but the inmates essentially have free run of the prison.

Granted, Australian prisons might be very different, so I'll cede to your authority there. I doubt the Aussie prisoners are all that much different from prisoners everywhere else, though.

BTW, have you read Shantaram?

As I have said I can not speak for all prisons, jails, federal detention areas just the ones that I have been to. In my area none of them have bars inside they have reinforced steel doors with concrete walls. Only one of them has a chain link fence around it, and that is after you get out of the concrete and steel building. So yes if you can get out of the building it would not be difficult to get out the rest of the way, but getting out of the building with out either some tools and/or outside help would be almost impossible in my opinion.

Now having said that prisoner ingenuity is sometimes nothing short of mind blowing, so what they could come up with I can not say for sure. However the likely hood of having "a couple of hundred men" able to work on any part of it is not going to happen, at most you are going to have maybe twenty. As for the battering ram where are they going to get the ram? The most I have seen in a cell is a sink (light gauge steel), a toilet (also light gauge steel), a bunk(s) (thicker steel but still softer tempered), and maybe a shelf(s) (once more soft metal). So none of these will work as a battering ram, so unless they can come up with some idea that I can not (and as I said their ingenuity can sometimes be mind blowing so possible) so far they have no way out.

Now if we expand this out to the work areas for the most part the basic setups do not change none of the tables and such are really study enough to make a good ram, and most of the areas are designed to not have tools that would be very usable to escape with. However the workshops do have tools that could be useful (more likely more useful tools in the maintenance area then the prisoner workshop) but if you are planing on leaving them would you let them have access to this area? If you are planing on leaving and not coming back would you not want to take at least most of the easy to move tools?

I am not one who thinks that they would not be able to work together, but before we got to the point that they would be left in there cells to die, I do think you would only have the worst of the worst left, all the rest either having been drafted, or released to reduce the number of guards needed. Now yes it is possible that some of these remaining inmates have advanced knowledge that would help they to escape. I am not sure how many of the guards that would be left at this point would really have issues with just locking them up and walking away, as I said I am basing this on there only being the worst of the worst left. So if you only have the murderers, rapists, child molesters and the likes left and likely the ones who are anti-social, I think it is much less likely that the guards will have any attachment to them. It would be entirely possible to have revulsion and/or dislike for them depending on how they have acted during the time that they have been there.

Now lets go on the assumption that they somehow did get a tool that would let them defeat the door (or the wall around the door enough to get the door open) I am guessing that with any hand tool it would take several days at the very lest per door (lets say between two and four day per) the shortest route out of the one that I went to most often was four doors and that was from the holding cells where they placed the inmates that we notified them before hand we would be picking up, from other locations it would double or more the number of doors to get through. So we are looking at between eight and sixteen day for the easy way, now even if it takes half that time (four to eight days) this is assuming that the inmates started right after the guards left, that they did not wait any time. The more time that they waited before they started working (thinking that the guards would be back or whatever) the weaker they would become from lack of food (depending on if/what they had in there cell with them), now they will be able to last for a month or so. But the more hard labor they are doing without food the weaker they will become so tasks will take more time and so on.