SYDNEY: An Australian prisoner who shed 14 kilograms to be slim enough to squeeze through an opening he had chiselled in the wall of his Sydney cell was on the run yesterday and most probably eating up a storm to get back in shape.

Robert Cole, 36, escaped from the hospital wing at Australia's oldest prison where he was serving time for theft and assault.

New South Wales Corrective Services deputy commissioner Ian McLean said the slimmed-down Cole managed to slip through a crack he had opened up between the bars and brickwork of his cell, scale a wire fence and then the perimeter wall.

He was 70 kilograms when he entered Long Bay prison in February 2003 but just 56 kilograms on his hospital record. Asked if he thought Cole had lost weight with an eye to an escape, McLean said: "It certainly looks like it to me."

Cole's break-out comes just a week after Corrective Services was forced to admit that two inmates who escaped from Sydney's Silverwater jail had not clambered over a wall as initially stated but brazenly walked out of the front gate. They fooled guards into thinking that they were on work detail outside the prison grounds.

Highest imprisonment rate

England and Wales has the highest imprisonment rate amongst all states in western Europe, a prison reform charity said yesterday.

The Howard League for Penal Reform said England and Wales had an imprisonment rate 50 per cent higher than countries such as France, Germany and Italy and almost double those of Scandinavian countries.

"Not only do we send a higher proportion of our own citizens to prison than any other western European country, we also trump Turkey, Armenia and Bulgaria in the imprisonment stakes," said charity director Frances Crook.

"Is this really where we want to be? We have to end this country's obsession with custody."

The prison population has grown steadily in recent years against a backdrop of political promises from the government and opposition parties to be tough on crime.

Last year, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said he wanted to focus on cutting reoffending but added he would abandon plans to curb the size of the prison population by forcing judges to take into account jail overcrowding when sentencing offenders.

The government had planned to increase the overall jail capacity to 80,400 by 2007 but Clarke said pegging the prison population to a set figure was the wrong approach.

Last April, the numbers in jail in England and Wales hit a record high of 75,550.

The Howard League said its figures, based on statistics from the Council of Europe, also showed England and Wales had more children and young people in prison than any other western European country, and was only behind Turkey and Ukraine.

"If we are to end the seemingly indiscriminate use of prison then the government has to promote positive efforts to deal with crime, such as community sentences, which make people take responsibility for their offending and live a law-abiding life," Crook said.

Source: China Daily