Police have warned the public not to approach a convicted violent criminal who absconded from an open prison in Buckinghamshire.
Thames Valley police said John Rooney, 47, who is less than halfway through a 27-year sentence for kidnap and robbery, walked out of HMP Spring Hill in Aylesbury on Monday.
Rooney left the prison at about 6.30am to take a lift to Bicester and was seen travelling on a bus to Oxford half an hour later.
DI Joe Banfield of Thames Valley police said the force was working closely with the prison authorities to try to locate Rooney. “Members of the public are advised not to approach him, but to call 999 immediately,” he said, adding that there were “substantial grounds for believing Rooney represents a risk of harm to the public”.
Rooney was jailed in 2003 but had been moved to an open prison where longer term prisoners are prepared for release.
The Prison Officers Association said the case highlighted its concerns about dangerous inmates being moved to open prisons. Its spokesman, Glyn Travis, said: “Anyone who’s in an open prison shouldn’t be considered a risk to the public. They shouldn’t be there if they are.
“Our concern is not the number of prisoners absconding, this is going down, but the type of prisoner absconding.”
A Prison Service spokesman said public safety remained its top priority and major changes had been implemented to tighten up temporary release procedures. They said: “Absconds are down 75% over the last 10 years, but each and every incident is taken seriously and the police are contacted urgently. Open prisons and temporary releases are important tools in rehabilitating offenders, but not at the expense of public safety.”
Police manhunts for prisoners who abscond are relatively rare. The latest figures show that 137 inmates absconded from open prisons in England and Wales in 2013-14 and the authorities soon caught up with the vast majority. Only 14 of the 204 prisoners who absconded in 2012-13 were later officially designated “unlawfully at large”.
The high-profile manhunt for Michael Wheatley, an armed robber nicknamed “Skullcracker” who absconded from an open prison in Kent last year, led to the then justice secretary Chris Grayling ordering that no missing prisoner should be allowed to return to an open prison.
