Inmate flees Australian prison using bed sheets

Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin said Jamieson escaped after cutting through a metal gate at the back of a small secure exercise yard that is attached to each segregation cell.

Stephen Jamieson, 28, had been serving a 12-year sentence since 2013 and was also believed to be involved in a plot to dig an escape tunnel only a week ago.

The maximum security prisoner had escaped by tying bed sheets together to scale a prison wall.

Jamieson had been in segregation after being identified as a suspect over the discovery of a man-made hole in the floor which was found in the prison earlier this month.

Just before 11pm on Tuesday, about 10 hours after Jamieson’s bold escape, the search party caught a break when patrolling police officers spotted a stolen Nissan ute travelling on the Hume Highway at Marulan, about 30 kilometres east of the Goulburn Correctional Centre.

The commissioner said that the escape was “a very serious matter” and would be the subject of an intensive security review.

“He was clearly somebody that was in maximum security for all the right reasons and furthermore he was actually segregated in the maximum security section”.

Police are appealing for public assistance to locate the man, who was last seen wearing prison greens.

The cavity’s opening, concealed by a cabinet in a prison workshop, was 60cm deep with an entrance of about 40cm by 18cm.

Authorities at the time said there was no risk to public safety and the maxim the maximum-security facility at the prison was the “strongest and most secure prison facility in NSW if not Australia”.