EIGHTY-five prisoners were tallied Tuesday after being transferred from the Lusignan Prison to the Camp Street brick prison facility, prison officials confirmed.
According to reports, the inmates after being transferred created a ruckus and complained about the building noting that the heat from the fire damaged the foundation of the building creating fears that the brick prison may collapse.

Prison officials, however, denied the allegation noting that the inmates were behaving badly because of the intense security. However, at the Lyken Funeral Parlour located at John and Norton Streets, less than a mile away from the prison, family members, relatives and colleagues of the late prison warden, Odinga Wickham, were paying their final respects to him.
Meanwhile, the Joint Service are continuing the hunt for the remaining prisoners from the 13 who dug their way to freedom on Monday morning at the Lusignan holding facility. Seven were recaptured the same evening.

Early Monday morning, during a routine head-count, authorities discovered that 13 prisoners had escaped. Prisoners were transferred to the pasture-like compound after a July 9 fire destroyed more than 70 per cent of the Georgetown Prison where they were being held.
Most of the prisoners were then sent to the prisons at Timehri, New Amsterdam, Mazaruni and at Lusignan which is next to the holding facility. However, the high-profile criminals in the compound were eventually transferred back to the Georgetown Prison.
Director of Prisons, Gladwyn Samuels, at a press conference had noted that before the escape there were 99 prisoners in the swamped area, 104 in the new holding area and 136 in the Lusignan Prison.

However, the 13 men managed to escape the prison during locking-down time and the tallying exercise on Monday morning. Regarding what specific time the men would have made their escape, the Prisons Director said that he believes that the men made their move between 01:00hrs and 02:30hrs when it rained heavily.
Questioned on what were the security arrangements at the time, he said there are three layers of security. “We have security officers that are within the Lusignan Prison, they are also supposed to assist the police in the tower situated around the swamped area, the new holding area as well as the Lusignan Prison. The Guyana Defence Force, they provide what is called the outer cordon.”

Based on his direct observation of the swamped area, the prisoners made their escape in the vicinity of a make-shift toilet located in the north-eastern end of the holding area.
“What was revealed is that despite we would have provided the portable toilets, the prisoners, I am not sure if it was because of numbers or they were uncomfortable with the use of the portable toilets, but some of them resorted to using an area where the two fences come together like a ‘V’, and somewhere there in order to protect themselves from others seeing them when they are using the ‘toilet’ there was a zinc sheet erected. The digging of the hole occurred in the same vicinity.”

According to Samuels, the men dug a hole which led them under the fence and outside the perimeter of the holding area. He said that the depth of the hole was approximately five feet and measured the same in length.