Prison breakout
A prison breakout (official term: escape of prisoners ) is the escape of a prisoner or detainee from sovereign custody (military or civil), for example from a prison or a prison camp .
The escape takes place individually or with other prisoners. Sometimes the escape is supported by outsiders ( escape helpers ). The escape can take place by overcoming the fences, by digging tunnels, supported by taking hostages , climbing over the obstacles or sneaking into (authorized) vehicles leaving, or vehicles illegally used by escape helpers.
Safety measures
Custody institutions have taken numerous precautions to prevent prisoners from escaping:
Structural and technical facilities
- high wall and several fences with barbed wire
- Bars over the prison grounds to prevent escape by helicopter
- Illumination
- Watchtowers
- Multiple locks
- Video surveillance , including videography
- deep wall foundations
- Search the vehicles entering and exiting
- Open spaces after the last fence
Personal precautions
Guarding by partly armed correctional officers from corridors or towers should result in direct observation.
Other safety precautions
- Visual monitoring of the site and the buildings by camera systems and personnel in watchtowers.
- Acoustic monitoring of the individual detention rooms is possible without any problems via the intercom (in Germany without a court order, but illegal and therefore punishable)
- Arming the guards (in Germany not permitted in the penal system, as the weapon could be removed by force).
- Checking cash registers .
- Review of mail; In Germany, depending on the federal state, only checking the content or complete censorship of random samples (e.g. correspondence with criminal defense lawyers is excluded).
- Acceptance of all mobile phones (including those of visitors).
- Regular checks of the cells and bars.
- Uniform, typical clothing ("convict clothing", often in a bright color; orange or yellow are particularly common in the USA, blue tones in Germany).
- Historically, iron balls were used to prevent the prisoner from getting away.
- Chaining prisoners to one another was also common in the US in prison cells (in Germany, shackling is only common when the prisoner is told to do something, e.g. for court appointments or visits to a specialist).
- In some prisons, cell phone reception is disrupted to make it more difficult to use devices that have been smuggled in (but this can lead to problems with the security guards' analog radios).
- Prisoners are physically checked after they have received visitors (random checks are common in Germany, unless they are individual cases that have already become conspicuous).
- Spatial separation when visiting, e.g. B. through a pane of glass, can be ordered in individual cases (for example because of the consumption of drugs in detention, but also if there is a high risk of escape).
- No cash held by prisoners. Without financial means it is more difficult to flee (money that is smuggled in is referred to as "black money" by inmates, but it is more relevant for drug deals).
Geographical location
The more remote the prison is, the worse the chances are that the escape will be successful. The most famous examples are prison islands like Alcatraz or penal colonies .
The following factors should be considered when building a prison:
- Isolated location (no nearby settlement, making it difficult to steal normal clothing or escape vehicle)
- Subsurface material unsuitable for the construction of escape tunnels (e.g. granite)
- Natural barriers that delay escape
- desert
- Rocky coast
- Water currents
- Climatic conditions (outside temperature or water temperature)
Risks
According to Section 100 of the Prison Act, firearms may be used against escapes in Germany , which is why it can happen that they are accidentally fatally hit. Excluded from this, however, are prisoners under youth and criminal arrest as well as in order, preventive, compulsory and compulsory detention . The use of firearms is excluded here, Section 178 (2) StVollzG. If the escaped person is caught, increased security measures are applied; the prisoner, for example, is excluded from detention until further notice.
There are very few known cases of escapes who were able to flee permanently. Prisoners who have often managed to escape are also known colloquially as the “escape king”. Usually, these people are specially guarded the next time they are kept, possibly in a high-security wing.
Law
In Germany and Austria, for example, there is no punishment for fleeing as such. As early as 1880, the legislature was of the opinion that “self-liberation” had to remain exempt from punishment, since it corresponds to the natural instinct for freedom of man and he has a right to freedom. The help to escape is punishable or fined ( § 120 dStGB prisoner release , § 115 OWiG , § 300 ÖStGB (release of prisoners)). Anyone who frees a prisoner, encourages him to escape, encourages him or even tries to do so, is punished in Germany with a prison sentence of up to five years or a fine, in Austria with a prison sentence of up to two years.
In German usage, escape means that the prisoner escapes from custody. It describes the classic breakout. The so-called loosening abuse, d. H. the improper use of a granted detention facility such as exit is therefore not defined as an escape, but as a non-return .
However, in order to be able to escape, escapees usually commit criminal offenses such as property damage (sawing through bars), bodily harm (using force against one or more prison staff, administering knockout drops ; in Austria, bodily harm is carried out on an official while performing his duties, the criminal offense of serious bodily harm ), resistance to state authority or bribery . A prison break therefore rarely goes unpunished. In addition, a joint, violent outbreak in Germany can be punished as a prisoner mutiny under Section 121 of the Criminal Code .
In addition, the escape itself usually constitutes a disciplinary violation of the institutional rules, which is punished with arrest or other house sentences or otherwise leads to stricter detention conditions. Successful or attempted escape usually also has negative effects on early release.
In other countries, such as Namibia , breaking out of custody is a criminal offense and is punishable by a fine or imprisonment.
Significant attempted and accomplished escapes
The longest time span between the outbreak and the return to the prison was achieved by the two-time murderer Leonard Fristoe from the state prison of Nevada (USA). His escape lasted from December 15, 1923 to November 15, 1969, when he was brought back to justice by his son.
On July 22, 1934, an inmate from the Texas Huntsville Unit took two guards hostage and forced them to free four of his fellow inmates. It was the leader of the Whitey Walker Gang, which was legendary in the USA at the time . Whitey Walker was killed while trying to break through the infamous prison walls and another inmate was seriously injured by gunfire. However, the other three inmates, including one death row inmate, managed to escape. The events were processed literarily in the book Over The Wall: The Men Behind the 1934 Death House Escape .
The 14 escape attempts from the maximum security prison Alcatraz in the United States also attracted a lot of attention ; see Escape Attempts from Alcatraz .
From July to August 1974, the longest prison hostage-taking in US history took place in the Huntsville Unit in Texas. The three criminals finally tried to get hold of an escape car in a crowd of hostages. Two hostage-takers and two hostages died while being accessed by the police. The third perpetrator, Ignacio Cuevas , was convicted of murder and executed in 1991.
On January 8, 1997, the " Pittsburgh Six " escaped from the State Correctional Institution in Pittsburgh through a self-dug tunnel. After twelve days, all of the escaped were caught again due to some bizarre circumstances.
On Thanksgiving 1998, seven death row inmates tried to escape from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit . Six of them were overpowered on the prison grounds, but inmate Martin Gurule managed to overcome two barbed wire-reinforced outer walls and, despite the gunfire, escaped the surrounding watchtowers. However, seven days later, his body was found not far from Huntsville. Because of this incident, death row was transferred to the Polansky Unit in Livingston in 1999, from where the inmates will now be transferred to the Huntsville Unit shortly before their execution.
In March 1998 inmates Graeme Burton , Arthur Taylor, Darren Crowley and Matthew Thompson discovered a damaged Plexiglas window in the shower wing of the maximum security Auckland Prison , which led directly to the prison yard. With tools smuggled in, they took weeks of work to completely remove the Plexiglas window and the window grilles, covering the visible interfaces with a color-matching soap mixture. With the help of an outside accomplice, they managed to escape on June 18. The eleven-day manhunt that led to the re-apprehension cost the state the equivalent of almost 400,000 euros.
On December 13, 2000, seven felons managed to escape from the Texas maximum security prison Conally . The criminals had taken over the workshop and a watchtower, overpowered 16 civilian workers and prison guards, and escaped with firearms in a stolen vehicle. The fugitives made international headlines and became known as the " Texas Seven ". They committed other crimes and murdered a police officer. By January 24, 2001, all those who had escaped could be arrested again. One of the refugees committed suicide and the other six were sentenced to death.
On May 2, 2006, Quawntay Adams was the only inmate to escape from the ultra-modern high-security Alton City Jail . Adams had been moved to Alton after two attempts to escape from St. Clair County Jail. Despite video surveillance in his cell, he was able to work his way through the steel roof with a smuggled saw blade and got outside through the ventilation system. He was caught again after just six hours.
In July 2006, police officer killer John Parsons escaped from an Ohio county jail. He had made a rope ladder out of sheets and made four snap-together paper rods with which he could attach the rope ladder to the wall in the yard. Over the rope ladder and through a spiked ribbon roll he reached the prison roof, from where he jumped six meters into the depth and escaped. He could only be caught again after 83 days.
In June 2015, convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat managed to escape from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in the US state of New York. Sweat had cut a hole in the wall of his cell and got into the mechanics room behind. From there he cut another hole in Richard Matt's cell wall. The two then fled through a cut open heating pipe. After about three weeks on the run, Matt was shot and Sweat was arrested.
"Escape kings"
The Belgian of Moroccan descent, Nordin Benallal , managed to escape from Belgian custody five times between 2000 and 2007.
The German Eckehard Wilhelm August Lehmann has already escaped custody eleven times in the course of his life and is already in the Guinness Book of Records .
The Greek criminal Vasilis Paleokostas managed to escape from the largest Greek prison Korydallos twice in 2006 and 2009 with the help of helicopters.
The Frenchman Michel Vaujour escaped from French prisons five times.
Theo Berger , Christian Bogner , Alfred Lecki , Jacques Mesrine , Steven Jay Russell , Frank Schmökel , Jack Sheppard , Peter Strüdinger , Walter Stürm are other well-known criminals who managed to escape from prisons and police custody several times .
Films and literature
Prison breaks are also the subject of comic book stories and many crime films. Escape is often done by filing through the bars and lowering them on sheets that are knotted together, by building escape tunnels or hiding in garbage cans and vehicles. Examples of films are:
- Papillon (1973)
- Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
- The Condemned (1994)
- Prison Break , US television series (since 2005)
- I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)
- 72 hours - The Next Three Days (2011)
- Escape Plan (2013)
Web links
- "Spectacular prison escapes with tanks, sheets and cutlery" List of prison escapes from the last decades (Spiegel Online)
Individual evidence
- ^ German Bundestag (ed.): On the criminal liability of prisoners' self-liberation . March 27, 2019.
- ↑ Trio gets 18 months imprisonment for escaping custody. Namibia Press Agency , March 19, 2019.
- ↑ Guinness World Records 2002 p. 110 ISBN 3-89681-005-7
- ↑ DH.be: Un hélico pour faciliter l'évasion de Benallal! ( dhnet.be [accessed October 27, 2017]).