When Travis Burns and Tommy Nikau went over the wall of Mount Eden Prison on Friday, they added their names to a long list.
At least 19 other inmates have escaped in the past 10 years.
Some broke out of the prison itself, while others made their getaway during visits to hospital.
August
1999: Minimum-security prisoner Jeremy Moses escaped while working in the officers' mess outside the prison walls.
April 1999: Mal Monika walked out the front gate and got to Tuakau before he was recaptured.
May 1999: Fraudster and thief Cass Mei escaped from two guards while at Middlemore Hospital. While he was on the run, Mei audaciously walked into Mt Eden to visit his prisoner-wife.
September 1997: King Cobra gang associate William Tuitupou escaped after taking a bench apart with a spanner and using the planks to scale a perimeter wall. He was caught two months later.
January 1997: Two men briefly escaped when they were being led from a bus to the prison's receiving compound. One was caught in an adjoining street and the other failed to make it past the car park.
October 1996: Remand prisoner John Ru Ropiha walked out of Mt Eden by posing as a visitor. While facing charges of kidnapping and car theft, he escaped from custody twice in two weeks.
August 1994: Simon Kerr spent 13 days camped out on one of the prison's turrets, protesting about conditions in the remand wing. The alleged leader of the "hole in the wall" gang had already escaped from custody four times, including once from Mt Eden in 1990.
July 1994: A violent Mt Eden prisoner slipped handcuffs and leaped from a second-floor window at Green Lane Hospital. He was found the same day at a relative's house in Manurewa.
February 1994: Robber Steven Woolston was wheeled out of the prison while hiding inside a rubbish "wheelie-bin." He was recaptured several weeks later.
January 1994: Car thief Tony Payne escaped for three hours from a Mt Eden Prison garage away from the main jail site.
August 1993: Child abductor Nicholas Reekie, rapist Mathew Herbert and burglar Jack Anderson fled from the prison's psychiatric unit after they cut through wire in the exercise yard then bent bars to get to the prison roof. Anderson was caught two days later, Herbert gave himself up 10 days later and Reekie was found in a Parnell hotel nearly a fortnight later.
May 1992: Convicted rapist Azam Ali and cellmate Ravendra Prasad squeezed out their cell window after removing a metal frame, sawing bars and using tied sheets to drop nearly 20m to a yard.
April 1992: Anton Tepania escaped during a visit to Middlemore Hospital for physiotherapy. He was recaptured six weeks later.
February 1992: Inmate Graeme Paerua escaped while receiving treatment at Auckland Hospital.
February 1991: Allan Wati, on remand for drugs and firearms charges, escaped while on special leave to visit his sick daughter at the now-demolished Princess Mary Children's Hospital. He was recaptured nearly two years later.
When Travis Burns and Tommy Nikau went over the wall of Mount Eden Prison on Friday, they added their names to a long list.
At least 19 other inmates have escaped in the past 10 years.
Some broke out of the prison itself, while others made their getaway during visits to hospital.
August
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