No one can accuse Joseph “Jose” Banks of lacking audacity.

While waiting to be sentenced for bank robbery, Banks and another inmate staged what a federal prosecutor later described as a “daring, dangerous, dramatic escape” from the 17th floor of Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop.

Captured two days later, Banks made another bold move.

He sued the federal government for making it too easy for him to break out of jail.

But Banks’ bid to collect more than $20 million in damages for his jailers’ alleged negligence keeps running into walls.

Last year, a trial judge dismissed the lawsuit after declaring it frivolous.

On Friday, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to revive the action.

“Banks gets credit for chutzpah, but that is not a basis of damages,” a three-judge panel of the court wrote in an unpublished order.

That wasn’t the end of the matter.

The panel gave Banks 14 days to explain why he shouldn’t be sanctioned for filing a frivolous appeal over the dismissal of his frivolous suit.

Banks, who represented himself in the case, is serving 36 years for bank robbery in the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo.

The government was represented in the case by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Walsh.

Spokesman Joseph Fitzpatrick of the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

In December 2012, Banks and fellow inmate Kenneth Conley broke a hole into the bottom of a window in the jail and rappelled to the ground using a rope made of bed sheets. Surveillance video from a nearby street showed the pair catching a cab.

Banks was captured after two days; Conley after 18.

Conley was convicted of escape and sentenced last year to 41 months in prison. The sentence was consecutive to the 20-year term he previously received on bank robbery charges.

Banks was not charged with escape, but he did pay a price for his unauthorized exit from the jail.

When he was sentenced in the bank robbery case, he received an obstruction-of-justice enhancement for the breakout.

Banks’ appeal in the criminal case is pending before the 7th Circuit.

Last year, he filed his suit under the Federal Tort Claims Act accusing jail employees of negligence.

U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo dismissed the suit as frivolous several days after it was filed. She later denied Banks’ motion to file an amended complaint.

Undeterred, Banks sought relief from the 7th Circuit.

In a brief filed with the court, he alleged jail employees ignored “warning signs” that something was not right and made the “unsound, dubious” decision to conduct a renovation project that was so noisy it masked the sounds of the escape preparations.

Banks also alleged his mental health had deteriorated while he was in jail, leaving him “paranoid delusional, deranged, manic-depressed, disoriented mentally etc.”

His weakened mental state left him vulnerable to Conley’s coercion, Banks alleged, and eventually led to a “semi-hostage situation” that evolved into a “full-blown abduction.”

Banks had no better luck with the 7th Circuit than he did with Bucklo.

“No one has a personal right to be better guarded or more securely restrained, so as to be unable to commit a crime,” the panel wrote.

Panel members were Judges Frank H. Easterbrook, Michael S. Kanne and Diane S. Sykes. Jose Banks v. United States, No. 14-2516.

Banks isn’t the only person to sue authorities for allegedly making it too easy for him to break the law.

For example, one defendant alleged a Wisconsin drug agent arranged for his sentencing on a state conviction to be delayed so he would be free to commit unrelated federal offenses.

To make sure he committed those offenses, the defendant alleged, the agent directed a government snitch to pressure him to make two sales of cocaine.

In a 2000 opinion, the 7th Circuit rejected the defendant’s entrapment defense.

The court, however, gave him credit for “creativity, novelty or perhaps even chutzpah.” United States v. Jorge M. Lopeztegui, No. 99-4230.