About 850 convicted criminals — including a suspected biker-gang affiliate who fired 15 shots at police officers and a man who killed a gun salesman execution style — are unlawfully at large in Canada.
The figures, obtained from Correctional Services Canada, show 145 inmates escaped from federal penitentiaries between June of 1966 and October of 2006 and have not been caught.
The rest, 704 convicts, are unlawfully at large after having failed to report to a parole officer during that same time frame.
The records take into account only convicts unlawfully at large from a federal institution where they were serving a sentence of two years or more.
Statistics compiled from the information provided by Correctional Services show one in four fugitives commits a crime within an average of 50 days of their breakout. Robbery and break-ins are the most common felonies with fugitives, but murder and sex offences are also on the list.
The findings, gathered from access to information requests made by The Globe and Mail, have alarmed police officials and victims groups, who have called for a review of parole sentences and minimum-security prisons.
"Escape is rather a loose term," said Bruce Miller of the Police Association of Ontario. "Escape is often nothing more than calling a taxicab or calling a friend to drive you off."
Minimum-security prisons are meant to house inmates serving the latter part of their sentence or who are perceived to pose no risk to society and who show no signs of wanting to flee.
But in the past nine years, more than 500 inmates have walked away from these penitentiaries, many of which have no fences or walls to keep prisoners inside. All but 12 were caught.
Correctional Services Canada did not disclose the number of escapes from minimum-security penitentiaries prior to 1997.
Among the convicts still on the lam are two of Quebec's most-wanted criminals — Martin Pellerin and Steven Solyom. Both escaped from Montée St. Francois Institution, in Laval north of Montreal, the federal penitentiary that recorded the largest number of escapes in the country.
Mr. Pellerin, a suspected affiliate of the Rock Machines biker gang, was arrested in 1995 after a high-speed chase, during which the 38-year-old man fired 15 shots at police officers.
Two years later, he tried to kill a fellow inmate at Donnacona Institution, a maximum-security federal penitentiary.
Despite his violent history, correctional officers judged it was safe to transfer Mr. Pellerin to a minimum-security prison in 2000. In June of that year, he escaped.
Four years later, Mr. Solyom would escape from the same prison, where he was serving a murder sentence. In 1989, Mr. Solyom shot dead a business owner who cashed the cheques of welfare recipients; Mr. Solyom then made off with $1,500.
Among those convicts on the lam who failed to report to a parole officer, Jason Vincent Liss is likely the most notorious. In 1993, Mr. Liss robbed a gun range in British Columbia. He took five semi-automatic handguns. But before he left with his loot, he ordered a gun salesman into a storage room.
Mr. Liss, then 21, made the salesman kneel and shot him twice in the head. The RCMP has been looking for Mr. Liss since February of this year.
For the victims, or their relatives, the knowledge that such perpetrators are at large makes for a long and painful recovery, said Steven Sullivan, the head of an Ottawa-based victims advocacy group.
"It really affects their quality of life," said Mr. Sullivan, president of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. Victims registered with Correctional Services Canada are notified as soon as an escape happens, he said, and some have to go into hiding.
