POLICE are still searching for a remand prisoner – believed to come from Ipswich – who escaped from a Norfolk jail and tried to persuade prison visitors to act as his getaway driver.

POLICE are still searching for a remand prisoner – believed to come from Ipswich – who escaped from a Norfolk jail and tried to persuade prison visitors to act as his getaway driver.

James Turner, 38, was a remand prisoner at Norwich Prison – charged with four counts of theft in Suffolk – until Wednesday at 3pm when he slipped past guards and out of the visitors' room to freedom.

Norfolk police are liaising with officers in Suffolk in the hunt for the escapee.

He took off his tell-tale prison bib before walking unchallenged into an adjoining waiting room where he sidled up to a family waiting to visit a relative and asked them for a lift.

They refused to help and after pleading with them: "You won't say anything, will you?" he tried to hitch a lift from two other women visitors, but when they also declined he set off from the prison on foot.

Turner was not dressed in prison clothes and was wearing a pale blue top with dark blue stripes. He had stuffed his white bib in his pocket.

He is of medium build, slim, with mousy brown hair and a bad complexion.

Norwich police spokeswoman, Nina Terry, said: "We checked the train station and informed British Transport Police but we believe he could have had access to a vehicle."

They have insisted he does not pose a threat to the public. Turner is thought to be the first person to escape from the category-B jail for six years.

A spokeswoman for the Prison Service said: "An investigation is under way, as is the standard practice."