Officials said he was caught while trying to walk out the front door unnoticed in clothes that belonged to his 19-year-old daughter. Investigators said they believed the mask was smuggled in by a visiting relative.

Image Mr. da Silva tried to escape a Brazilian prison disguised as his 19-year-old daughter. Credit... Rio de Janeiro's State Secretariat of Prison Administration, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. da Silva, who was known as “Shorty,” was serving a 73-year sentence on drug trafficking charges. In February 2013, he was among a group of inmates who escaped from a prison in Rio de Janeiro by slipping through a sewage pipe. He was later caught.

Brazilian officials have come under fire for their inability to safely hold prisoners. Last week, at least 62 detainees were killed following a clash between rival gangs at a prison in the northern state of Para. In late May, 55 prisoners were killed in a similar incident in the state of Amazonas.

The country’s prison system has been overwhelmed as recent tough-on-crime policies have led to a sharp rise in detentions.

Rosental Alves, a Brazilian journalist and a professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said the authorities have an “old and bad tradition of exhibiting suspects in humiliating ways, as though they were trophies.”