Imagine hiding from police dressed up as sheep, after escaping from a prison

How often would you have heard of stories of people taking on animal disguises to escape from police ? Not very often, right ? These are mostly part of comics or fiction, but normally you would consider that the physical structure of humans is very different from those of animals, and to consider that a human being could wear an animal outfit and hide from people seems to be a difficult concept to accept. Yet, you have these convicts escaping from a high security prison by wearing outfits in the shape of sheep (which are very different physically from humans) and managing to escape from the police who were looking for them (link to article):

Maximiliano Pereyra and Ariel Diaz stole the sheep hides from a ranch after fleeing from an Argentinian maximum security prison a week ago, The Sun has reported.
The duo managed to evade 300 policemen on their trail by disguising themselves as sheep. Locals have seen them running through farmland at night.
"They were wearing grey clothes but had full sheepskins, including the sheep's heads, over their heads and back," a farmworker was quoted as saying.

Thai man kept in prison for 3 extra years because of a typo, finally released after a visit by a Minister

Who says that meetings with politicians cannot be helpful ? This Thai man, serving a long sentence in an Indonesian jail, certainly valued his meeting with the Minister. The jailed man had been sentenced to life in 1987 for a drug related sentence (should have been thankful not to have been sentenced to die, like Singapore and other countries in the area do so), and was later given a slight reprieve, with the sentence changed to 20 years by a presidential decree. So he should have been out in 2007, but when setting the decree, the year of entering the jail was set as 1997 instead of 1987, with nobody seeming to correct it. It was only in 2010 when a minister was visiting the jail that the inmate got a chance to be able to present his case, and was promptly released (link to article):

A single clerical error can change the course of one’s life. Just ask Kamjai Khong Thavorn, 53, a Thai national who spent nearly three extra years in the maximum-security Pasir Putih Penitentiary in Nusakambangan, West Java, because of a typing error. Kamjai was due for release in 2007 after a 20-year sentence he received in 1987 for heroin possession, but up until Wednesday, he was still behind bars.
Having spent an extra three years in jail for no fault of his own, Kamjai was promptly released on Thursday after a chance meeting with Justice Minister Patrialis Akbar, who happened to be visiting the prison for an inspection.

Prisoners strike for more sex

The need for sex is a basic need for people, and there is no better example for this than what happened in a Paraguay prison. The prison allows visits for conjugal purposes, and the regulation was they had to happen during the daytime. But after a riot by the prisoners, this rule was relaxed and such conjugal visits were allowed after daytime work hours (thus letting partners from outside come more frequently without missing work):

Paraguayan officials have put down a prison riot by agreeing to inmates' demands for more sex. Justice Minister Derlis Osorio said Friday the riot at the Esperanza industrial prison ended after four hours without deaths or injuries.

This also means that prisoners can continue to do the work they are doing at the prison during these hours, and not worry about disturbance to their regular schedule.

Van does 120 miles to escort a prisoner for 200 yards

Taxpayer groups that monitor Government expenditure to ensure avoidance of wastage and tracking expenditure were horrified at this recent case in the United Kingdom. A prisoner was to be moved between courts for a hearing; the distance between the courts was 200 yards. The police washed their hands off the matter since the prisoner was in the custody of the courts system, and it was deemed inappropriate to the rights of the prisoner (since he was an accused and not convicted) to make him wear handcuffs for the 200 yard journey across the road. So what was the solution ? A van was called to take him, and the van was called from a place more than 60 miles away:

Local Tory MP Brian Binley said: “I’ve never heard such nonsense. Quite frankly I don’t care about his human rights in this situation and I’m sure he wouldn’t have either. To get a matter like this mixed up with human rights is nonsense.” Labour MP Sally Keeble said: “This seems to me like a complete waste of public money and a breakdown of common sense.”
The “dilemma” arose when Mark Bailey, 35, appeared at Northampton Crown Court to answer theft charges. After a short hearing, he was told to report to the magistrates across the road. Rather than walking, a vehicle was dispatched from Cambridge almost 60 miles away.

It is quite normal for tax payers to respond in outrage to such a case. In times of such high oil prices, and when people are struggling with bad economic situation, such wasteful expenditure should have been avoided. A compromise should have been found.

Man sentenced for keeping daughter as sexual prisoner

It was just a few weeks back that there was a big scandal over a man in Austria keeping his daughter in an underground cellar for 18 long years and fathering 7 children with her (while his wife lived in the same home upstairs). Now, it turns out that this happened in other places as well, and is a matter of grave concern. The bigger problem is that these cases show a failure of societal checks and balances due to this happening for a number of years, and yet nobody noticing and caring. In Argentina, a man has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for doing the same:

BUENOS AIRES: A 73-year-old Argentine man who fathered two children with a young daughter he kept as his sexual prisoner will serve 16 years in prison himself.
Prosecuting Attorney Sergio Antin said the case of Eleuterio Soria had similarities to that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man arrested last month for locking his daughter in a basement for 24 years.
Soria's trial revealed that he began abusing his daughter in 1992, when she was 12 years old. The following year she became pregnant by her father, prompting her mother to leave their home in La Matanza, a working-class Buenos Aires district. The family's five other siblings eventually left as well. The daughter, whose name was not released, had a second child by her father in 1997. Unlike Fritzl, Soria used psychological domination rather than physical restraints to keep her in the house. She did flee on various occasions, but would return home after he threatened their two children - often at gunpoint.

The incidents of incest, and such repression and perversion of one's own children are abhorrent, one wonders as to what is going on in the mind of the perpetrators.

Client-attorney privilege keeps man in prison

Imagine that you have been prosecuted for a crime that you did not commit; and then you discover that there were people who knew that you could be innocent, or that there was enough information that could be available that put your trial in question and the legal matter of attorney-client privilege was the reason that you spent so many additional years in prison. This is a case that shows how a regulation can end up harming the life of a human; but in the end, the person would have been happy that he eventually got out of prison:

A man locked away 26 years for murder was granted a new trial and freed on bail Friday with the help of two attorneys who came forward with a client's confession after the client died in prison. Two attorneys recently revealed that their former client, Andrew Wilson, admitted committing the crime that sent Logan to prison, but attorney-client privilege had kept them from coming forward.
Wilson's death last year allowed the attorneys to unseal an affidavit stating that Logan was not responsible for the fatal shooting of security guard Lloyd Wickliffe at a McDonald's restaurant in January 1982. Dale Coventry, one of the attorneys who signed the affidavit, said Friday night that he hopes prosecutors will acknowledge that they went in the wrong direction with the case.

It was good for Logan (the wrongfully sentenced person) that he finally got a chance to get out of jail and enjoy life again, although one is not sure whether he will get compensation for wrongful imprisonment. And even though the attorneys did the wright thing, maybe they could have explored some actions to take the right action earlier.

Man slathers vaseline in hotel room

Get this. A man was arrested for covering everything in a hotel room with vaseline. Robert Chamberlain, a resident of Virginia, US was charged with mischief for damaging a Motel room. He did not break anything in the room, instead, he used 14 bottles of vaseline to cover every single thing in the room - mattresses, pillows, sheets, furniture, TV, everything. When this was discovered by a motel clerk, the motel filed a complaint with the sheriff's office. The police found Robert in a nearby Econo Lodge, covered head to toe with vaseline.
Read the original story here.

Bad hiding place

A burglary suspect was caught by the police and was being taken away by the police in their car. Then the fun part starts. He managed to kick out the car window and get away from the car. Still wearing handcuffs, he got away from the police pursuing him and sought safety in a nearby building. It would all have gone according to plan, except for one thing. He somehow missed seeing the big star on the entrace of the building where he sought safety. It was actually a sheriff's office.
A deputy inside the building noticed a man in handcuffs rushing inside and managed to catch him and hold him till the pursuing car police ran in. The burglar now faces an additional charge for attempting to escape. Read the story here.

Committing robbery to get back into prison

People really try their best to get out of jail; so meet this guy who desparately wanted to get back to jail. In an incident that would have astonished bystanders, a man walked into a bank, told the teller that he was robbing her and then told her that he was waiting for the police. He then waited for the police to arrive.
Turns out that this guy had been sentenced some years earlier, spent time in jail and then been released. After he came out, he never did appreciate the life he was leading and wanted to get back to the jail life.

Arrested for stealing handcuffs

This really made me smile. A man was arrested for theft, and escaped while still wearing handcuffs. So what did the police do when they re-arrested him ? They filed a case against him for stealing police property - the handcuffs. Read the story here.

Trying to steal guitar by hiding among clothes

Tried shop-lifting something that is almost as big as you ? Well, this guy tried.
A music store owner saw a customer walking out of the store without buying anything; well such a thing happens a lot. However, it is not often that you see a person walking stiffly and with a big bulge in his clothing. When the store owner challenged this guy, the guy denied that anything was amiss. But he eventually owned up and revealed that he was trying to conceal a guitar in his clothing - from his shirt to his trouser, from his knees to his neck.
Further search of his home revealed a sound system, also stolen from the same shop. He is now charged with theft. But think about it - trying to conceal a guitar among your clothes.

Prisoner escape using petroleum jelly

A different use of grease, something that the law and order crowd will definitely not like. In South Africa, a prisoner escaped from a high security prison by covering himself with petroleum jelly and using the extra lubrication to push himself through a small opening, something that he would never have been able to do with the extra lubrication.
Police are embarasses, this was an escape of a notorious criminal (awaiting trial on rape, murder and other serious crimes) from a high security jail. He removed a bulletproof window and after some squirming, managed to make good his escape, and in the process, created a record by being the first prisoner to escape from the jail in its 36 years of existence.