A prisoner escaped from a van in Watford Police Station after he was released from his handcuffs by guards.

Patrick Wickens, 32, made a run for it while being transferred from his cell to a van in the yard waiting to take him to prison.

Wickens had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a number of handbag thefts from old people across the south east of the country.

St Albans Crown Court heard how Wickens burst out of the cage inside the van after arrest for a burglary he committed on November 13.

Wickens, of no fixed abode only made it as far as the yard before giving himself up.

Wickens has spent much of his life in jail and was branded a "social menace" by Judge Baker, who jailed him for four years.