SYDNEY, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Police in Western Australia (WA) have apprehended all 10 men who broke out of the Greenough Regional Prison earlier this week, with the final escapee taken into custody Thursday at a property near Geraldton, 400 km north of Perth.
The 10 men who escaped have been taken to a maximum security prison in Perth.
A number of inmates on Tuesday started a series of fire inside the Greenough Regional Prison.
With prison staff forced to attend to the blazes, the 10 men gained access to the roof and used power tools and a ladder to escape.
Although five of them were immediately recaptured, the panicked communities nearby remained in the grips of terror for the next 48 hours, as detectives, tactical operations units and uniformed officers tracked down the prisoners one by one.
While all the 10 escapees have been recaptured, the public eye has now turned to the underlying issues at the Greenough Regional Prison.
Designed to hold 223 inmates, a report last year by the State's Custodial Services revealed the facility was vastly over capacity housing 323 prisoners.
However in a radio interview Thursday with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the state's corrective services commissioner Tony Hassall refuted the claims that overcrowding played a role in the prison riot.
"The prison system does have its challenges in terms of the prison population, but on the day of the incident there were 284 prisoners and beds for 346," he said.
"There was plenty of capacity in the prison and there was no excuse whatsoever for the behavior of the prisoners on the day."
"We will work with the police to prosecute those prisoners to bring the full extent of the law down on them."
Described as a "war zone" by WA Premier Mark McGowan, much of the Greenough Regional Prison has been left uninhabitable and it now appears many of the population will have to be relocated to other facilities.
