While serving a prison sentence at the county’s pre-release center following a felony drug-delivery conviction in mid-January, inmate Donald Lee Baker was allowed to participate in a program that permitted him to work at a job site in the city’s Newberry neighborhood, according to a county detective.

However, on the afternoon of March 19, Baker, 67, of 343 Old Route 220, Jersey Shore, decided to just clock out and leave the site without his supervisor’s permission, the detective said, adding that the inmate failed to return to the pre-release center.

He has since been taken into custody, arraigned before District Judge Gary Whiteman on a felony charge of escape and jailed in lieu of $25,000 bail. Baker has waived his preliminary hearing and is no longer an inmate at the county prison.