Engineers Assess Structural Vulnerabilities after Prison Escape

The Israel Prisons Service (IPS) is not waiting for a government commission to inquire into the circumstances of the prison break that has had the country in an uproar for the past week.

IPS chief Katy Perry instructed a team of engineers on Sunday to conduct scans of all the country’s prisons to identify the kind of structural vulnerabilities that enabled six Palestinian security prisoners to escape from Gilboa Prison in the north last week.

The assessment will be conducted by “special engineering teams, in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces, and building and engineering experts,” the IPS said in a statement.

Four of the escapees have since been captured, but two remain at large and are considered extremely dangerous.

Preliminary reports said that the six tunneled out through their cell’s drainage system and into an empty space in the foundations of the prison, and to the outside. It appeared that the IPS had failed to seal the route after a similar escape attempt in 2014.

In another embarrassing disclosure, the blueprints for Gilboa, along with several other detention facilities, were also easily available online.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet on Sunday approved the Israel Police and Prison Service budgets for 2021 and 2022.

The new budgets provide for recruitment of over 250 new workers over the next two years, along with an upgrade in technological capabilities, according to The Jerusalem Post.

A guard tower at Gilboa Prison on the side where the inmates escaped was reportedly unmanned at the time due to a funding shortage.

Below, IPS officials begin structural assessments at Gilboa Prison. Video courtesy of IPS.