A 23-year-old man serving time at Bastøy Prison, an island prison in Norway, is on the run after using an antique surfboard and a toy shovel to break out and paddle to mainland. The man was serving time at Norway’s Bastøy prison, which is considered a minimum security prison, and I find that to be quite odd when you take into consideration that he was in prison for narcotics and rape charges. Those are not the sort of charges that likely land someone in minimum security prison, those are the sort of charges that usually land someone in maximum security prison. But Norway is heralded worldwide as being extremely progressive when it comes to rehabilitation in prison, so who am I to question their ways?
The prison that was housing the convict who is now on the run actually sounds more like a summer camp than it does a prison, with activities including (but not limited to) “horseback riding, fishing, tennis, and cross-country skiing”, and the prison cells have windows without bars.
The prisoner escaped after finding an antique surfboard in a closet somewhere on the prison grounds along with a toy shovel (or spade, whatever), and he used the surfboard and plastic toy beach shovel to paddle himself 3 kilometers (almost 2 miles) to the mainland where he is now on the run from law enforcement.
“The escape was discovered this morning, when we saw a window was open,” prison manager Tom Eberhardt told VG newspaper.
“We had an old surfboard standing in a shelter, so old that it is almost an antique,” he added. This is what he has stolen, and he took a toy shovel as well.”
“It is not very difficult to get away from Bastøy, and it happens fortunately very rarely,” Eberhardt said. “But we are concerned about security, partly because we are on an island and want to prevent people getting killed as they attempt to escape”.
He told VG that if the escaped prisoner was eventually tracked down by police, he would face serving the rest of his sentence in a normal prison.
Is Norway not endangering the rest of the Nordic countries with their sh*tty prison system? Sure that man says prisoners rarely break out, but obviously it does happen. This is a ruthless criminal who is now amongst the public, a sex offender who is roaming amongst the people of Norway because all it took to break out of prison was grabbing an old surfboard from the closet. The U.S. certainly needs some prison reform, but f*ck Norway for letting a person like this just walk out of prison. Someone needs to be held accountable for this.