I´ve read in the paynes... er, haynes manual that you can adjust the parking brake cable by getting under the car and by the shifter linkage that there is some sortof cable that you can adjust, but I honestly dont know for sure.
I do know that you can pop out the center console and adjust the pull on the lever with a little nut thing, and that´s what I tried, and it basically picks up the slack, but my wheels still don´t lock like they should, so that probably won´t help you a whole lot.
Anyway, the haynes manual will tell you that you need to adjust the parking cable and the parking brake activating lever, which is located at the rear discs.
This involves going under the car, taking the heat shield off from where the resonator usually is (I think) and then disconnecting a thing called an equalizer, which is a fancy name for something that takes the one cable that comes from the handbrake and divides it into two cables which go to the individual wheels to actuatye the parking brake levers.
Anyway, I dunno exactly what the parking brake levers do, but chances are that adjustment of the cable won´t help you, because I have the same problem and it didn´t help me. It seems like whatever is supposed to be locking up the wheels in the bake mechanism itself has worn through anyways.
Either way, the orgin of the problem is that poor, ignorant people drive escorts and they fail to realize that the parking brake light is on when they turn on the car, then they complain to the mechanic that their car is smoking and by then they´ve fucked their car up anwyays.
I´ve NEVER driven an escort with a fully functional parking brake, ever.
All the people who drive escorts are morons. :-]