Prison officers foil jail break

TWO prisoners who attempted a Shawshank Redemption-type prison break were still behind bars yesterday.

The inmates tried to chip and chisel their way through a concrete wall in Mountjoy Jail using improvised files, but prison officers carrying out a routine search of cells early on Sunday morning spotted their hard work and their bid for freedom was nipped in the bud.

“Some of the prisoners were chipping and chiselling and they had chopped out certain areas around the bars,” said one prison source. “It was a considered attempt, they certainly made a lot of effort, but it was a pretty pointless exercise.”

The attempt evoked the 1994 Oscar-winning movie, The Shawshank Redemption, in which prisoner Tim Robbins filed his way through his cell wall before escaping through a sewer.

The prison source said four inmates were in the basement cell at the time. He said the cell walls had been renovated five years ago and the old brick and mortar walls had been replaced with concrete.

“These were new walls, not old brick and mortar, so the chiselling would have had little effect.”

But this didn’t stop two of the inmates.

“These were not entirely the brightest lads,” said the prison source. “I don’t know if they had seen Papillon or something,” referring to the 1973 prison-break classic starring Steven McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

The source said that even if they had got through the walls, they would have come out behind a cage.

However, he said it was rare for such an attempt to be even made.