Prison break: How criminals ‘jump jail’ and vanish without a trace

In late December 2014, Peter Kamau Ndung’u, a Bachelor of Commerce student and Naivasha Maximum Prison inmate on life sentence escaped while sitting for an exam at a Nairobi university.

While plotting his escape, Ndung’u who had been charged with violent robbery, had confided in a few friends that he doubted whether justice would be accorded to him.

He claimed he was angry that police had framed him in a felony he never committed.

The star student had wowed prison authorities with his stellar performance, having emerged top countrywide in the CPA examination and was often used as the mascot for successful prison reforms. Prison staff even organised a harambee, raising about Sh400,000 that went towards Kamau’s education. He was held in high esteem within prison corridors where he was entrusted with leadership responsibilities.

But deep inside his heart, Kamau was a bitter man, always camouflaging his true self as he quietly calculated how to win back his freedom by hook or crook.

Coming from a poor background, Kamau had nursed big dreams of pursuing higher education. But something that temporarily shattered his dream happened outside their home in Thika.

“You know, that is the most painful part of my story. I came here because of something I didn’t do,” he told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in a previous interview, claiming to have been falsely accused of robbery.

In 1999, the police came to his neighbourhood looking for the culprit of an armed robbery. A car used in the crime was found on his family’s property. Police rounded up all the young men living nearby, including Kamau. He said those who were able to bribe the cops were immediately set free as his long, tormenting life in prison began.

“If you have money, you get freed. If you don’t have money, you get convicted. That’s how it happened,” he said.

Kamau is among prisoners who landed in jail for serious offences they claim they never committed. To them, escape from prison is always a burning desire to win the freedom they were ‘denied’ by law, due to a defective criminal justice system.

Psychiatrist Dr Frank Njenga says apart from wrongful confinement, there are factors that compel prisoners to escape. Some of them include a deplorable prison environment, incompetent prison staff and poor pay of the warders.

“When people are put in jail, naturally their liberty is taken away. As long as you are behind bars, instinctively, you will want to escape, but that depends on several components. For example, if you think you were jailed for the wrong reasons, then the desire to escape would be strong. So, the conviction to escape depends on a particular component,” Njenga explains.

The criminal justice system is a set of agencies and processes established by a government to control crime and impose penalties on those who violate laws. In Kenya, some of the agencies saddled in endemic corruption include police, prisons and courts. There is even a joke that those with money can buy back their freedom.

James Aggrey Mwamu, a lawyer, is in agreement that there is a correlation between jailbreaks and a flawed criminal justice system. He cited corruption, professional ineptness of prison staff compounded by poor pay as some of the key factors that made it easy for inmates to escape.

“There is poor recording keeping. In some prisons, it is not easy to establish where inmates are located. The warders are poorly paid, therefore easy to bribe and compromise by well-connected criminals with deep pockets,” explained the former president of East Africa Law Society (EALS).

So how simple or difficult is it for an inmate to escape from prison custody? A prison warder said most jailbreaks take months to accomplish, with bribery coming into play. He corroborated that inmates from wealthy backgrounds easily escape due to their ability to compromise security systems.

“Some staff, either from outside or inside Kamiti, aided those three guys. Don’t be cheated that they could have gathered on their own, the courage to escape without a prior protection plan,” stressed the warder while referring to hardcore criminals Isaac Karanja Mwangi, Joseph Kinyanjui and John Kamau Gathoni who staged a dawn jailbreak at Kamiti Maximum Prison on May 22, 2015 and vanished without a trace.

The robbery with violence convicts were serving life sentences when they made the badass escape during a heavy downpour. They allegedly cut the grills of their cells and tied blankets and mosquito nets to make a rope with which they used to scale the walls of the highly guarded prison.

Prison authorities did not clearly explain security lapses, instead saying a power blackout as a result of the heavy rains made it easy for the prisoners to execute their mission undetected. The jailbreak came about 10 days after another convict, Samuel Munene, who had been detained at the same facility, was re-arrested at a hotel in Uganda after escaping and going underground for months.

For almost eight years, Munene had feigned illness as he plotted his escape. He had remained ‘confined’ on a wheelchair and received frequent ‘treatment’ at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) from where he finally escaped. Munene is alleged to have stolen clothes from another patient in February 2015 to disguise himself. He sneaked out of the hospital without raising any suspicion.