Inmate flees using bed sheets

The 28-year old inmate fled from Goulburn Correctional Centre in the Australian state of New South Wales, Australian media reported on Tuesday.

Using a method that could have been taken from the plot of an old movie, Jamieson escaped after first cutting through a metal gate at the back of a small secure exercise yard attached to his segregation cell at around noon on Tuesday, said Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin.

He attached a pillow around his waist to avoid being injured by razor wire on the security fence.

Jamieson has a history of attempted prison escapes and had been in solitary confinement for allegedly digging the start of a tunnel discovered under a cabinet in the prison workshop.

He had also tried to escape from another prison on a previous occasion.

When the tunnel hole was discovered, the Mayor of Goulburn said there was no risk to public safety as the maximum security facility at the prison was the "strongest and most secure prison facility in NSW [New South Wales] if not Australia.”

Huge manhunt underway

"He was able to get out of that exercise yard and then he had a range of bed sheets that he tied together and was able to swing them over the wall to then effect his escape by scaling that wall," Severin told Australian public broadcaster ABC.

"He was clearly somebody that was in maximum security for all the right reasons and furthermore he was actually segregated in the maximum security section.”

Severin insisted that the correctional system was safe, saying the security "does provide community safety; last year we had the lowest ever recorded rate of escapes, they were all from open custody."

He said: "It is a very serious matter, it is one that we will not only carefully investigate but certainly conduct a quite intensive security review which will involve some interstate assistance that I'm going to seek this afternoon from my fellow commissioners."

A large manhunt for Jamieson is now under way.

Some of Australia's worst criminals are housed at Goulburn Jail, 200 kilometers (124 miles) southwest of Sydney, including backpack serial killer Ivan Milat.

mh/kms (dpa)