A day after the arrest of two death row inmates who escaped from the Taichung Detention Center on May 7, a prison guard has admitted he accepted a bribe to help the two convicted murderers escape.
Jailer Hsu Chang-ching (徐長慶), who fled the jail with the two felons, told prosecutors that Huang Chu-wang (黃主旺) had offered him NT$8 million but that he had never received the payment.
Hsu, Huang, and another escapee Yang Han-peng (
During interrogations the three have been telling different stories.
Huang maintained that Hsu volunteered to help him escape while Hsu said he was forced at gunpoint.
Prosecutors are now believed to be investigating a rumor that a former judge and now lawyer masterminded the escape.
Yesterday, Minister of Justice Chen Ting-nan (
Despite acknowledging that everything he knew about correction institutions had been gleaned from movies and his own imagination, he wasted no time in dismissing staff suggestions that the institution was heavily under staffed.
"Good use of technology would be an alternative and much more efficient means [of safeguarding prisoners] than increasing staff numbers," Chen said.
He said that under-staffing is prevalent in many governmental agencies and is not likely to be solved in the short term. After an inspection of the detention center, especially the control center and the escape route the men used, Chen took another swipe at the detention staff.
"... you have been looking at the problems without really seeing them," he told detention center officials.
He suggested the center increase the number and change the locations of surveillance cameras in corridors, improve the lighting in corridors, and install infrared-ray detectors at important doorways.
"Even the on-shift staffer watching the monitors should be under surveillance by higher-ranking officials watching another camera," Chen said.
The new warden Wu Jeng-bor (吳正博), who was appointed to the post following the escape, supported Chen's suggestions, claiming that although there were just four officers scheduled on duty at the control center at the time of the escape, no one was monitoring the security cameras.
He asked officials at the center to compensate for the fault with good deeds and to improve management and security so that the center may become a model for other correctional institutions in the future.
Visiting the detention center with Chen Ting-nan yesterday were DPP legislators Tsai Ming-seng (
Tsai recommended improving on-the-job assessments of current correction officers and reviewing the selection procedure of new recruits.
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