Out of sheer panic or just plain stupidity, four suspected car thieves committed the biggest fail of the century after driving straight onto the grounds of Cape Town’s notorious Pollsmoor Prison in an attempt to flee the police.

We wish we were joking, but that’s what happened: they really tried to escape from the police by driving to a notorious maximum-security prison that’s home to some of South Africa’s dangerous criminals and gangs.

Yeah, I’ll definitely have to go with stupidity on this one.

So how exactly did these four men screw themselves over? According to IOL, a police patrol spotted the car on Sunday night – which was reported stolen from Hout Bay – being driven in the nearby Tokai area, trying (and failing miserably) to look inconspicuous.

And then the shortlived chase was on!

City police spokesperson Wayne Dyason said:

[The suspects] were then chased by police and drove straight to the West Lake entrance of the prison, which is used for visitors and the prison wardens who live on the property. They got out and ran into the grounds of the prison where they were arrested.

*Slow, sarcastic clap*

Wow. I’m sure this do-it-yourself-policing will be a real game-changer. Maybe it was too dark to see the road signs that pointed towards the prison in the first place.

News24 reports that the suspects were searched at the police station, and “it was found that they roughly had 35 cases of murder, attempted murder, theft and possession of illegal firearms pending against them”.

Lesson learned, kids: if you don’t want to get yourself arrested, don’t drive a stolen car to a frickin’ prison.

[source:iol & news24]