Prisoner tries to escape Alphen a/d Rijn prison in a wheelie bin

A prisoner tried to escape from the Alphen aan den Rijn penitentiary institution on December 24 by hiding in a wheelie bin. He didn’t actually get out of the prison, but employees failed to notice his absence during multiple roll calls, only noticing he was missing the following day, the penitentiary institution service DJI said in a report on Monday.

The prisoner apparently had the help of another inmate in hiding himself in the wheelie bin. The penitentiary is investigating how his absence went unnoticed during multiple cell rounds.

The DJI also reported two escapes by psychiatric prisoners while on unsupervised leave from the Dr. S. van Mesdag forensic psychiatric clinic in Groningen. On December 1, a psychiatric prisoner failed to return from unsupervised leave. The police arrested him again on December 4. The same happened on December 5. The police returned that prisoner to the clinic later that evening.

Someone also managed to smuggle a pen gun into the penitentiary institute in Leeuwarden, the DJI said. Prison workers found the pen gun in a garbage container on December 6. The prison went on lockdown, and the police and prison staff searched the institution. They found “no objects that could be associated with the pen gun,” the DJI said.