(source: TASR)
ĽUBOMÍR Behan left his workplace, a damaged shooting range outside the walls of the highest-security prison in Leopoldov, on the morning of June 2. As The Slovak Spectator went to print on June 9 he remains at large and a manhunt has been extended to the entire Schengen area.
Behan had served one year of his eight-year-and-eight-month sentence for robbery before he escaped. He reportedly had an accomplice on a motorbike who helped him. Jozef Daňovský, a clinical psychologist, surmises that Behan acted in haste after he saw the opportunity to flee.
Slovakia's prisons
18 prisons
1,497 accused
8,740convicted
(June 2016, the Sme daily)
1,995 conditionally released
388 reclassified to lower level
166 reclassified to higher level
1 prisoner tried to escape
1 tried to leave the workplace
3 attacked officers in service
9 attacked off-duty officers.
(ZVJS official yearbook 2015)
“He may not be dangerous to the public as he does not want to draw attention to himself,” Daňovský told the Pravda daily.
In the wake of the prisoner escape, repair works were suspended and the authorities began to investigate procedures of the guards, technical premises, available camera records, as well as eyewitness testimony, said Adrián Baláž, head of the general director’s office of the Prison and Justice Guards Department (ZVJS).
Behan, the prisoner on the run. (source: TASR)
Benevolent work conditions?
Outside the prison, inmates work in guarded or unguarded work sites with supervision. Workplace security depends on location, the expected number and make-up of inmates, the prison’s staff and weaponry, and other factors, Baláž said.
“Behan, as a medium-supervised inmate, was permitted to work outside of prison, but only with guards,” Baláž told Pravda.
Štefan Kadlečík, a former guard at Leopoldov prison, pointed out that inmates who have only months left until the end of their prison time usually work in such outside places.
“While these prisoners may not benefit from the break, he already benefited,” Kadlečík said, as quoted by public-service broadcaster RTVS.
There is no fixed ratio of how big a portion of his or her sentence a prisoner should have served to be able to work outside, Baláž told the Sme daily.
Behan served time as a youth once before, for nine months, for theft and invasion of privacy. Under his current sentence, after three years he would have been eligible to apply for parole.
If he is caught, his present sentence will be extended by one to five years. Guards who were in charge of the fugitive could lose part of their salary, their rank, or even their job if the investigation finds they neglected their duties, the Aktuality.sk website reported.
Prison breaks in history
Over the years 2011-2015, 14 prisoners tried to flee from 18 prisons in Slovakia, but only four of them managed to actually leave the premises. One of the most curious escapes in Slovak history is that of an alleged bank robber Roman Červenka who fled from a hospital in Bratislava in January 2008.
