Are inmate microchips fix to finding future escapees? Jeanine Pirro: ‘Yes’

Judge and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro says the escape of New York killers David Sweat and Richard Matt will inspire other hardcore inmates – and the best solution to halting future prison breaks is the implantation of microchips.

“This is ‘Shawshank Redemption’,” she said on NBC’s Today Friday morning, a reference to the 1994 film, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, which got seven Oscar nominations.

“Now, every other inmate around the country is going to say, ‘Maybe I can do this too,'” she said.

Pirro, a Republican with her own show on Fox, also suggested that Joyce Mitchell, the prison worker who allegedly helped the escapees, will be in hot water when all is said and done, despite getting cold feet in the end and reportedly abandoning plans to be the getaway driver.

“That’s not gonna help her at all,” Pirro said, saying she expect expects Mitchell will be charged.

She added that prisoners become very calculating behind bars and that they flatter folks they think may be sympathetic.

“Human beings are human beings,” she said. “Inmates try to ingratiate themselves … This happens all the time.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo remains optimistic that the manhunt will turn up Sweat and Matt – but raised eyebrows about the manhunt, which is now almost a week long, with one comment.

“We had tips today that they were in Vermont. We had tips today that they were in the immediate area,” the governor said Thursday. “We’re following every tip. That’s all I can say. They could either be four miles from the prison, or they could be in Mexico. You just don’t know.”

Investigators were poring over surveillance video from a gas station on a road between Clinton Correctional and Cadyville, NY – a five-mile distance – to see if they could catch images of the escaped killers.

Dogs picked up their scent there, and then east to the tiny town, which remains in lockdown as cops search the surrounding woods.

The Mobil gas station has a Subway restaurant and Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie told CNN the pair may have been rummaging for food outside it.