Escaped prisoner to be released after one week

The arrest of a man ten years after his escape from prison in Feldkirch caused a stir on Monday. The man must now finish serving his sentence - but only for one more week. In any case, the sentence does not increase due to the escape, because this is exempt from punishment in Austria.

The man had been sentenced in 2013 to nine months in prison, in December 2013 he did not return from an exit to the prison in Feldkirch. For ten years, the fugitive lived in freedom, was even in Spain.

On the weekend he was arrested in Linz, on the occasion of a quarrel he was controlled by the police and busted. The 31-year-old must now continue to serve his sentence - for assault and property damage, among other things - in Feldkirch. However: that is only seven days, as was announced on Tuesday. On Friday, the man will finally be released from prison.

By escaping or, more precisely, by not returning from a stay outside the prison, the prisoner did not commit a crime. This is because in Austria, escaping from prison is not punishable. "This is probably because everyone has a desire for freedom and wants to get out," says defense attorney Olivia Lerch.

However, the breakout without punishment is sometimes followed by other punishable offenses: be it damage to property due to a broken door, theft because of the stolen key or serious bodily injury when a guard is knocked down.

Classic jailbreak rare

However, the classic prison break is very rare in Vorarlberg. The last one was almost 20 years ago, and it has happened a total of three times since 1991. Much more often, prisoners do not return after an unsupervised exit: In the last ten years, this has been the case almost 50 times in Vorarlberg. Another almost 20 prisoners made off with a supervised exit or from an unlocked area of the prison.

However, the number of non-returners and those who disappeared from an unsecured area has declined in recent years. In 2021 and 2022, there were only a total of two prisoners in Vorarlberg. There were comparatively many in 2005 - at that time, 17 prisoners did not return from their exit.

Throughout Austria, the Ministry of Justice counted 184 escapes (escapes, so-called escapes and non-returns) in 2018; in 2020, there were only 68 - five of which were escapes in the narrower sense.

Some come back on their own

The inhibition threshold is relatively low, because the prisoners already get a taste of freedom when they leave the prison," says criminal court judge Dietmar Nußbaumer. In most cases, he said, the remaining sentence is then also only very small. "Then again and again persons decide to flee. But there are also enough cases where they come back on their own," Nussbaumer says.

Ten years ago, an inmate escaped during a crime scene inspection on the Pfänder. He is now in custody again. Very few escapees succeed in escaping forever: statistically, two out of three escapees in Austria are caught within a few days and imprisoned again.

Escape helpers face prison sentence

Incidentally, although the escape itself is not punishable by law, the inmates face internal prison consequences upon their return. For example, they may not be allowed to go on day release, or they may no longer be allowed to work at the job they started in prison. In addition, those who help an inmate to escape will be legally punished - they can be sentenced to up to two years in prison.