At least four prisoners freed in error still at large, BBC told | UK News

At least four prisoners released in error are still at large, the has been told.

These are among 262 prisoners in England and Wales mistakenly released in the year to March – up from 115 the previous year.

The new information comes as the government is under increasing pressure after a number of high-profile cases of prisoners being wrongly released.

An Algerian sex offender who was mistakenly released from prison was arrested by police on Friday.

Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was one of two men separately released by mistake from the prison in the same week. Both are now back in custody, after William Smith handed himself in on Thursday.

Their releases came after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu, who arrived in the UK on a small boat, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford in Essex late last month.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “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.”

But there has been widespread criticism of the government’s handling of the issue.

The unaccounted prisoners reveal “the incompetence of this government”, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said.

“It shouldn’t be left to reporters to uncover the facts. [Justice Secretary] David Lammy must finally come clean about how many prisoners have been accidentally released and how many are still at large.”

A spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said “every resource” must go into finding the prisoners.

“This is a disgrace and an omnishambles. It shouldn’t have to take the media to inform the public that prisoners are at large after accidental release,” Jess Brown-Fuller said.

In a statement, Lammy said: “We inherited a prison system in crisis and I’m appalled at the rate of releases in error this is causing.

“I’m determined to grip this problem, but there is a mountain to climb which cannot be done overnight.

“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures, and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”

The revelation that four prisoners are still at large after being wrongly released came just hours after Kaddour-Cherif was arrested.

The Algerian national was spotted by a member of the public in the Finsbury Park area of London just on Friday morning.

He was convicted of indecent exposure in November 2024, relating to an incident in March of that year.

He was given an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders’ register for five years.

He had been let out of HMP Wandsworth in south London on 29 October, though police said they were not told until Tuesday.

Kaddour-Cherif is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visitor’s visa in 2019, but overstayed that and was in the initial stages of the deportation process.

He was released the day after being found not guilty of breaching the sex offenders’ register’s requirements – but he was still facing other charges and should have remained in custody.

The prison officers’ representatives said a clerical error meant there was no warrant from the court to hold him, and he was let go.

It followed a series of prosecutions and court appearances dating back two years.

William Smith, the second man released from HMP Wandsworth in the past week, handed himself back in on Thursday. He had been let go on Monday having been sentenced to prison earlier that day.

Prisons have been in a state of crisis for several years. The population has continued to balloon, with the number of staff not keeping pace with the number of inmates.

Only a hundred or so places were available in male prisons last summer. This triggered the government’s emergency release scheme – where some inmates would be freed after serving 40% of their fixed term sentence, rather than the usual 50%. It was implemented to reduce overcrowding and already almost 40,000 inmates have been let out under the scheme.

But this has also had repercussions on the number of mistaken releases.

The government has pledged to build more prisons to ease overcrowding, with projections showing the prison population will continue to grow but this will take time.

Additional reporting by George Wright