Bit close for comfort

Apparently, the prison escapee known as the 'skull cracker' has been caught, however it also seems that he was involved in an armed robbery at the Chelsea Building Society in Sunbury - about a mile from my house!

I passed by on the way home, and the area is all cordoned off and teeming with press (more press staff than there is police).

 

He certainly shouldn't be in an open prison, that's for sure!

I bet your escapee wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into @Jiffy

 

Apparently it's normal to be transferred to an open prison before release... Don;t really think the assessment criteria were very good if they think he's safe for the community! It took him all of a couple of days before getting back on the job.

 

I actually think it might be tomatoes, and that he must have been stalking me on GC for a couple of years, as I grew Moneymakers in 2012

I have an even more cynical theory - - coming close to release, so do a runner and another bank job and get an extension on the sentence? Another ten years in jail - warm, dry, fed and watered for free, TV and a pool table........... what reason could there be to get out of jail??

 

Are we focusing on the wrong people? I would have thought we would be asking questions about the "wise and learned" people of the parole boards who let such a man out???
A great friend of mine was a Prison Officer, who has now retired ,in an Open Prison which was burnt to the ground in 2009 by the prisoners within months of him retiring. He was always frustrated and angry that the overcrowding of the more serious prisons was leading to the Government sending violent career criminals to the Open Prison.
He once objected directly to the Prison Governor when he discovered that a group of incoming prisoners were all of the same Gang that had committed a string of violent crimes and yet instead of being split up and sent to a higher level of prisons were being kept together and placed in an open prison. He was told that the Governor had received instructions to accept them and could do nothing to change it.
My friend's opinion of Parole Boards was that they were unworldly, naive, and incapable of understanding that they were dealing with potentially dangerous people and were ignoring the Public's safety when releasing them. Prison Officers opinions and recommendations were and never have been taken into consideration despite the fact that they work in the prisons day in, day out, 24/7 and know intimately and realistically who should be released and who should not be. But this is not a new state of affairs if you think back there have been several murders on the streets within days of a criminal being released.
The Minister's "line" is that hundreds and thousands of prisoners are released every year without incident....which is true. What is also true is that 99% of those releases are petty, non violent offenders who don't want to go back to prison. The truth being hidden and ignored is that for decades there has been great pressure to release prisoners early, place them in the wrong level of prisons because of the lack of cell space, and that the Ministers [a] know of the situation and of the failings of the Governors and Parole Boards but leave them to take the blame, or The past and present governments cannot, and have not, been capable of getting to grips with the problem and have handed the whole mess over the private companies who themselves are incapable of running prisons.