Showing posts with label escape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label escape. Show all posts

Two prisoners escape from Pentonville prison in London



Two prisoners, one of whom was recently found guilty of attempted murder, have escaped from Pentonville prison in London.

The fugitives, who reportedly fooled prison staff by leaving makeshift mannequins in their beds, were named by Scotland Yard as Matthew Baker, 28, convicted two weeks ago of attempted murder, and James Whitlock, 31, who was on remand after being charged with conspiracy to burgle cash machines.

It is understood the pair used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to break through their cell bars before scaling an outer perimeter wall. A male visitor to the prison, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was told the runaways had folded bedsheets into the shape of mannequins to fool staff into believing they were still asleep. A female visitor, who also wished to remain anonymous, said a prisoner had told her the two men escaped through a cell window on the fifth floor. She said it was rumoured they had used bedsheets to lower themselves down. She said: “They cut one of the bars and then they came down through the window. They are assuming that it was probably bedsheets and it was at night.”

It is assumed that the breakout happened during the night and the prison authorities only discovered the mannequins on Monday morning. The two escapees had been held in the same cell in Pentonville’s G wing.

Escapes from inside prisons have become extremely rare in recent years, with only two recorded in 2015-16 and no more than two being recorded in any financial year since 2007-08. But the Pentonville escape comes just two weeks after an escape from a prison in the north-west, adding to the deepening prisons crisis facing the justice secretary, Liz Truss.

The Prison Governors Association said the Pentonville escape marked a new low for the Prison Service as it was “an institutional failure in one of our most core functions – keeping prisoners in custody”.

“The old Victorian prisons are squalid and vermin-infested and governors do not have direct access to the funds to tackle it. Prison cells have been vandalised and prisoners have access to drugs and mobile phones, some delivered by drones,” the PGA said.


How Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Prison

The tunnel through which they escaped


It is the first ever time when prisoners of this maximum security prison were able to successfully attempt an escape.

Their names are Richard Matt and David Sweat (convicted murderers). What they did was cutting through the walls in their cells, scaling a cat walk and coming out through a manhole cover a block away. There were a series of underground tunnels that led from the prison to the manhole.

In order not to reveal their missing they used hooded sweatshirts and other materials to create decoys to fool the guards who run their checks every 2 hours.

The prison officials admit that some tools were used in this creative plot. And these hand tools were obtained within the Clinton facility where many contractors come to do jobs all the time.

Quick escape from jail filmed by surveillance cameras


A man who was making a phone call all of a sudden decides to break out of his jail when he sees an open window. He craws through it and ends up in a prison lobby, then another camera records his fast run out in the street. A guard followed him immediately through the same window.

Escape from a maximum-security Texas prison

The brazen escape of seven inmates from a maximum-security Texas prison in 2001 has quickly become the stuff of a crime thriller whose ending is not yet known. The escapees remain at large, elusive despite a huge manhunt that has intensified since the fugitives were charged with the slaying of a police officer.

But as investigators follow up more than 2,000 tips, all but a few leading nowhere, the prison break has prompted broader concerns about security inside the Texas prison system -- now the largest in the country -- and a political debate about how to respond.

The inmates escaped from the Connally Unit in South Texas. They managed to subdue several prison employees, take their clothes and escape by convincing a guard that they were maintenance workers. Mr. Stringfellow attributed the escape to ''several breakdowns'' in procedure by individual guards, which he said will be outlined in the report.

But others say that to blame the incident solely on a handful of guards ignores the larger problems facing the system, namely that too few guards are responsible for a growing number of hardened offenders serving longer sentences with less incentive to behave. Union officials representing prison guards say the Connally unit was understaffed by 22 officers at the time of the escape, including a guard who should have been positioned at the gate where the inmates left.

Prison statistics show that the number of escapes throughout the system has actually dropped since the mid-1990's. Mr. Stringfellow said that all but 1 of the 245 inmates who had escaped in the history of the state's prison system had been caught. That lone exception is currently in Mexico.

But the statistics also show that violence inside the prisons has risen sharply in recent years, with the number of attacks on guards more than doubling from 1996 to 2000, from 918 to 2,267. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported this week that the Connally Unit from which the inmates escaped had reported 752 assaults against employees since it opened in July 1995, the most of any Texas prison unit.

As the tips on the prison escapees continue to mount, none appear to have brought investigators anything solid on where the criminals might be. Unconfirmed sightings of the men, who are believed to still be together, have been reported throughout Texas and in Oklahoma, Colorado, Louisiana and New Mexico. The escapees have been charged in the killing of a police officer in the robbery of a sporting goods store on Dec. 24. A reward of $200,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest.

based on the NYTimes article

4 Delaware Inmates Escape Using Prison Sewer System

Four inmates, including two convicted of murderer and one convicted of rape, cut their way through a steel-reinforced window and escaped through a prison sewer system on December 2, 1986 at the Delaware Correctional Center, the authorities said.

The hunt for the escaped prisoners immediately spread through Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland, officials said.

They were believed to be armed with a shotgun in a car they stole outside the prison.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations was called in to assist, said Cpl. William Eubank, state police spokesman.

The prisoners were discovered missing at a 2 A.M. bedcheck in their medium-security building within the central compound at the prison near this central Delaware community, Corporal Eubank said.

The four men apparently cut through a steel window-frame in the building, climbed outside, then descended through a manhole inside the compound, he said.

Based on the NYTimes article

5 Women Escape From State Prison

Five female inmates apparently squeezed between steel bars on a window to escape in December, 1984 from a maximum-security section of the Niantic Correctional Institution, the state's only prison for women, officials said.

It was found between 10 P.M. and 10:30 P.M. Saturday that the women were missing, during a bed check at the prison, said Connie Wilks, a spokesman for the State Correction Department.

They were last seen in the prison about 9:30 P.M., she said.

The authorities were investigating how the women got between the bars, which are 15 inches high and spaced 7 3/4 inches apart, covering the entire window, the spokesman said. Niantic Correctional Institution is ''open- campus style, with no fences around the perimeter,'' she said.

Based on the NYTimes article