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Five inmates at Mt Eden Prison planned an escape straight out of a TV show - but their plot was foiled after an intelligence-gathering team received a tip-off.
In a scene that could have come straight out of the popular TV series Prison Break, guards swooped on the offenders this week after a tip-off that a group of inmates was about to abscond.
The guards found a number of items that were to be used during the escape, including ropes made out of knotted sheets.
The items were hidden in the prison's exercise yard, but the similarities with the TV show - in which a group of prisoners successfully escape after spending much of their time planning their breakout in the yard - end there.
Mt Eden's prisoners never made it across the barbed wire fence.
Public Prisons Service general manager Harry Hawthorn said the tip-off about the escape attempt came from the jail's recently formed enhanced intelligence-gathering team.
The team had learned that a group of five prisoners was planning an imminent breakout.
Mr Hawthorn would not say whether the tip-off included the identity of the escapers, or just that a breakout was planned.
He also would not say how the breakout equipment was hidden in the exercise yard.
The escape attempt was the first major one to be prevented through information gathered by the new team, which also aims to prevent contraband from getting into the jail.
It receives information from a number of sources, including guards, prisoners and members of the public.
Mr Hawthorn said the number of successful escapes had dropped by 78 per cent in the past 10 years.
In 2005-06, about 20 escapes occurred, compared with nearly 90 in 1996-97.
