Prison

Tatsuma Hirao, 27, who was serving time for multiple thefts, had been working at a shipbuilding yard at the Matsuyama prison in the southwestern city of Imabari.

But he gave guards the slip on Sunday night, disappearing from the facility he shared with around 20 other inmates.

According to Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov, there are serious flaws in the security of the Penitentiary establishments. Therefore, he said, the most dangerous criminals should be concentrated in one prison that is technically secured, with a high level of security.

Once again a convict escaped from a Bulgarian prison. The 42-year-old Georgi, nicknamed Mandjata, has not returned to the Plovdiv prison after working on an outside site. He was sentenced to one year in prison for possession of drugs. He was serving his sentence in an open type prison dormitory. On the second day, he did not come back from the site he worked on.

At least 21 people died Tuesday in an attempted breakout from a prison in northern Brazil aided by an armed group on the outside trying to blow up a wall, officials said.

Prison wardens are considering reopening their protests and informing them in an open letter of the Prime Minister, the President of the National Assembly, the Justice Minister and the Chief Prosecutor.

A court has ruled that the Justice Ministry and the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Centers must pay 100,000 Turkish Liras  ($ 25,430) in damages to an inmate after he suffered a serious medical infection in jail in the western province of Bursa.

The number of workshops employing inmates in jails across Turkey has reached to 1,700, with more than 50,000 prisoners working under the program overseen by the Ministry of Justice.

The Justice Ministry has sent a letter of complaint to the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) regarding the still unaired television series “Avlu” (prison yard in Turkish), stating that the show depicted prison personnel as “torturers” and the prison as a “torture center.”

Justice Minister Tudorel Toader announced at a news conference on Monday that the inmate population in Romania is on a downward trend, with the number of outgoing detainees exceeding the number of incoming inmates.

He added that the size of the inmate population in Romania is 22,884, while 12,795 civil servants are working in the penitentiary system as special status prison staff.

The Justice Ministry is investigating reports according to which a guard at Attica's high-security Korydallos Prison was attacked by a group of inmates a day after finding contraband items in their cell last week.

According to sources, the guard searched the cell of three Albanian inmates and discovered 250 SIM cards last Thursday.