near a prison?

[jaberwocky]

been wondering if any of you nice lot live near a prison.and if so,whai effect it has on the local community.i'm thinking house prices,possibly some unsavoury characters moving in to be near their kin.asking because where i live people are getting uneasy due to the fact that a new prison{high security}has just opened about a mile away and by spring 09 it'll have 700 inmates.

[weeal]

Here in Perth we have two prisons, one 'main' prison which houses the same dangerous animals that many prisons do, and we have an open prison for those either serving 2yrs or less or finishing the last 2yrs of their sentence.
The houses around both prisons are the same as any elsewhere in Perthshire, they are not occupied by prisoners families and dont seem to suffer any prison-related problems.
Perth itself has a reasonably low crime rate, its a lovely place, very rural.
The same cant be said for every prison however, dont suppose there is a pattern.

[Eve]

There are two round here, Strangeways and Forrest Bank though there aren't houses right by them from what I can see.

I'd rather a high security than something like an open prison I have to admit, especially if I had kids and there were potential dangerous people out and about unsupervised.

I hate to be sweepingly generalistic about the prison population but if I had kids I'd feel very uncomfortable unless they had no chance of escaping.

I have a friend who lived near a bad one, Broadmoor I think, and he said there used to be panic when the alarms used to go off.

[dot.hawkes]

Surely the opportunity to oppose this has been and gone, I guess any protet was handled and assessed and if it has been built and is due to open, your Local Authority have agreed everything, has there not been a cimmunity actin group operating a campagn to have your rats reduced and for a continual level ofr information exchange?

[Mr Veritas]

I can only talk about houses near to wandsworth Prison in London (a friend lives near there).
The large victorian villas sell(still) for between �750,000 and �1.5 million!
Even ex Council(block) flats start at about �300,000 for a 3 bed property.
So being near Wandsworth Prison doesn't seem to have affected the property in the area.
It's not very usual for prisoners families to buy houses just to be near their loved ones,many prisoners families have enough problems with rent,let alone getting a mortgage.
They certainly couldn't afford to do so in the case of Wandsworth Prison!

[jaberwocky]

there was a huge amount of opposition to this.however,once the decision has been made they wont be swayed by ANY opposition.unfortunately we're not that far from carstairs state hospital also.i still vividly remember the night when two escaped killing three people in the process.scary stuff.thanks to all.time will tell.

[bednobs]

ha! i live not too distant from the "step down" prison from broadmoor, thornford park (people who have MH probs but still need locking up but on a bit of a less secure level) And all the houses nearby are lush, uge ones that are expensive (not mine though)