Police have arrested a 20-year-old man who was on unsupervised leave from a juvenile psychiatric prison (tbs) for his role in a Tilburg murder.

The man was arrested following an armed robbery on a private home in Tilburg in which the 48-year-old resident was shot dead. He had returned to the clinic and was arrested in his cell several days after the killing.

According to the Telegraaf, the man was sent to the clinic for a number of ‘extremely violent crimes involving raids and the use of guns’. He was on unsupervised leave to ‘prepare him for a return to society’.

A spokesman for the justice ministry said ‘a thorough investigation will be carried out into why he was allowed out and still went off the rails’.

The matter raises more doubts about the efficacy of juvenile psychiatric prisons, the Volkskrant says. According to justice ministry figures, 80% of the 2,000 youngsters who have been been sentenced to juvenile tbs re-offended within 10 years of release. Up to 50% did so within two years.

Earlier this year a man on accompanied leave from a young offenders clinic esaped from his guard and attacked and stabbed a woman in a supermarket.