A total of 91 prisoners have been freed by mistake between 1 April and 31 October this year – the equivalent of around three per week, according to the latest Ministry of Justice figures published on Tuesday.
Justice secretary David Lammy is due to face MPs in the Commons on Tuesday, as the government faces mounting pressure over a series of high-profile releases, including that of Epping sex offender Hadush Kebatu.
In the following weeks, an Algerian sex offender and a fraudster from HMP Wandsworth were also accidentally freed, sparking a double manhunt.
Some 262 inmates were mistakenly let out in the year to March 2025 – a 128 per cent increase on the 115 in the previous 12 months, government figures also show.
Releases in error can include misplaced warrants for imprisonment or remand, sentence miscalculations or can be a result of mistakes by courts or other authorities, the Ministry of Justice said.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said he would press Mr Lammy to make clear how many prisoners have been accidentally released since 1 April this year and how many are still at large, as well as how many are violent or sexual offenders.
Mr Jenrick said the accidental releases of Kebatu and the two prisoners that sparked manhunts were “just the tip of the iceberg”, and that the British public deserved to have the “full picture”.
Mr Lammy admitted on Friday that there is a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prison system.
Prisons minister Lord James Timpson said on Monday there is “no quick fix” to releases in error, and it is “going to take time to get it right”.
Ethiopian national Kebatu has since been deported, while Algerian national Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was arrested on Friday and is understood to be in the process of being deported.
Kaddour-Cherif was serving a sentence for trespass with intent to steal, but had previously been convicted for indecent exposure.
Billy Smith, who was also accidentally freed from Wandsworth on Monday – after having been sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences, handed himself back in on Thursday.
Stronger security checks were announced for prisons and an independent investigation was launched into releases in error after Kebatu was freed from HMP Chelmsford on 24 October.
Kebatu had been sentenced to 12 months in custody in September for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman, sparking a month of protests outside asylum seeker hotels across the UK.
Over the weekend, it was reported that a total of four such offenders had been released in error, with two released in June this year, and two in 2024.
On Monday, sources within the government suggested that one of these had been returned to custody.
But in a sign of the crisis behind the scenes within the custodial estate, he is understood to have never actually been released in error, and was miscounted among those who had been.
Whether the miscounted prisoner remains in custody or was released at the correct time is unclear.
