Authorities have accidentally released four prisoners from UK jails who remain at large, with two freed in error in 2024 and another two released mistakenly in June this year still missing.
The revelations pile pressure on Justice Secretary David Lammy amid a crisis in the prison system.
Officials resolved two recent cases this week. Police arrested Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian sex offender, on Friday after authorities mistakenly released him from Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Wandsworth on October 29. Billy Smith, 35, handed himself back to prison on Thursday after officials accidentally freed him from the same jail on Monday.
Another case involved Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national whom authorities mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford on October 24, 2024. Police later arrested him for sexual assault and authorities have since deported him.
Dramatic Increase in Errors
The scale of the problem is stark. In the year to March 2025, UK prisons mistakenly released 262 inmates, a 128 per cent increase from 115 in the previous 12 months. Of these, 90 were violent or sex offenders.
The error rate is growing faster than the prison population itself, which has increased by just one per cent to 87,334 inmates.
Political Fallout
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick attacked the government's record. "The chaos continues. The Government keeps putting the British people at risk and is relentlessly failing victims. Does anyone have confidence in David Lammy?" he said.
Home Secretary Chris Philp claimed 50 specialist officers were needed to catch Kaddour-Cherif. He accused Lammy of losing "control of the justice system" and being "too cowardly to explain himself".
Liberal Democrat spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller called the situation "a disgrace and an omnishambles".
Systemic Failures
Cassia Rowland, senior researcher at the Institute for Government, told the Daily Mirror the prison system is failing on basic requirements. "The problem is prisons at the moment are like failing to deliver on basic requirements. We can't keep prisoners safe. We cannot keep prison staff safe, effectively. Some prisons can't even tell you how many prisoners they're holding", she said.
Rowland warned there is not much chance that provisional checks will fix things quickly and no quick way out of the crisis.
Prison guards revealed to Metro that overcrowding and understaffing make it hard to spot serious errors.
Government Response
David Lammy acknowledged inheriting "a prison system in crisis" and said he was "appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing". He added: "I'm determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight."
The Justice Secretary has ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the BBC: "The vast majority of offenders released by mistake are quickly brought back to prison, and we will do everything we can to work with the police to capture the few still in the community."
Note: This article was created with Artificial Intelligence (AI).
