The U.S. Marshals have joined the effort now that it's been more than a day since Gino Hagenkotter was last in custody.
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Hagenkotter, 34, was in custody for retail thefts. He will now be facing much more serious charges.
He fled from the Riverside Correctional Facility before noon Thursday, dropping his orange jumpsuit before taking off.
He was last seen on surveillance video in the city's Holmesburg neighborhood Thursday afternoon wearing a white shirt, dark-colored pants and boots.
Hagenkotter escaped while on work detail outside the nearby Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center. He asked a corrections officer if he could use the restroom, then climbed a fence and fled.
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"In this case, you gave an individual an opportunity, and he took it," Philadelphia Prisons Department Commissioner Blanche Carney said in a news conference Thursday.
Police say Hagenkotter does not have "any dangerous history," but officials warned he should not be approached, and urged anyone who sees him to call police.
News conference on Philadelphia prison escape
It's the second escape from a prison on State Road in six months.
In May, Ameen Hurst and Nasir Grant broke free.
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They were being held for much more serious crimes: Grant was being held on gun and drug charges, while Hurst was charged with four murders. Both were caught within 10 days.
A woman briefly escaped the same jail in September by scaling two fences topped by razor wire.
Meanwhile, a corrections officer told Action News reporter Maggie Kent that there are issues nearly every day at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, which is near Riverside and the PICC.
"Daily (stabbings) at almost every facility. It's violence, just like you have violence outside the city, inside these walls it's the same thing," said David Robinson, the president of the corrections officer union AFSCME LOCAL 159.
Robinson says with staffing vacancies at over 40%, the prisons have become unsafe for both inmates and staff.
"You need to bring people in. This department has no recruitment team," he said.
Claire Shubik-Richards, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, says conditions at the Philadelphia Department of Prisons have been dangerously unsafe for two years now.
"All of the conditions at the Philadelphia prison system are a threat to public safety at a time in which most of us here in Philadelphia feel the community isn't safe," said Shubik-Richards.
Meanwhile, sources say a man was beaten to death at Curran-Fromhold around 4 a.m. Thursday. It marks the second murder in that facility this year.
The Philadelphia Prison Society says the 44-year-old victim was in an intake unit and had been in jail for less than one day when he was killed.
Shubik-Richards and the officers' union president fear the conditions will only get worse for inmates and staff.
"Either a large portion of the people in the facility need to be moved or a big influx of trained staff from elsewhere need to be brought in," she says.
The Associated Press contributed to this report