Disciplinary action against four guards over Prokuplje prison escape

A month after two inmates fled the district prison in Prokuplje, the administration for the enforcement of criminal sanctions has opened disciplinary proceedings against four members of the prison security service. The cases are being conducted under Article 109 of the Civil Servants Act. One guard was suspended and removed from duty on the very day the escape was discovered.

The two inmates left the facility on the night of May 14-15. According to the account so far, they broke through a hole in the ceiling, climbed onto the roof, and crossed it to get outside the prison grounds. One of the escapees, by unofficial accounts, was serving time for theft and had only four months left until the end of his sentence. That is one of the details drawing the most questions, since his release would have followed soon enough even without the escape.

From the moment the disappearance was noticed, the two men have not been located. The search continues, but officials are speaking about its course with restraint. Reports from the internal review that followed are marked confidential, so the circumstances under which the failure occurred remain out of public view for now.

How did conditions in the 1878 building affect security?

The Prokuplje district prison was built back in 1878. It is a facility whose relocation to a new site is already planned precisely because of its decay. Old materials, a weak ceiling and roof structure, and a layout designed to 19th-century standards raise a serious question about whether a building this old could provide a modern level of security at all.

In legal terms, the disciplinary action against the guards and the assessment of the building itself are two separate matters. Article 109 of the Civil Servants Act concerns an individual’s breach of duty, not the state of the structure. At this stage the security officers have the status of persons against whom proceedings have been opened, which does not mean their responsibility has been established. Disciplinary responsibility is proven in the proceedings and can end in various ways, from acquittal to removal from service.

Still, the point about a dilapidated building awaiting relocation cannot be separated from the question of oversight. If the structure was known to be decaying, the question only grows sharper as to how the supervision of inmates was organised inside it, and whether working conditions allowed the guards to notice a breach through the ceiling in time.

What happens next with responsibility and the building itself?

The next step is to see the disciplinary proceedings through and establish whether there were lapses in the work of individuals. In parallel, the search for the two escapees continues, with no known outcome so far. A third question, the fate of the building itself, remains at the level of the previously announced relocation to a new site.

What troubles the public is that institutions stay silent on the circumstances while the review reports are confidential. Transparency in cases like this does not mean disclosing operational details of the search, but giving a clear answer to how the escape happened in the first place and who bears responsibility for it.

Can a rundown building from 1878 serve as an excuse for a security failure, or should the known state of the structure have meant tighter, rather than looser, supervision?