Twelve further prisoners accidentally released, says Lammy

Justice Secretary David Lammy has said 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the past three weeks, two of whom are still at large.

It comes on top of the 91 prisoners who were freed by mistake between April and October.

Speaking to the BBC, Lammy said there would always be a "human error" while prisons were using a paper-based system and that the situation would improve once a "completely digital system" was adopted.

He said there had been "a spike" in accidental releases but added it was now on "a downward trajectory".

Speaking to ITV later, Lammy said he had been "reassured" that the two prisoners at large were not violent or sex offenders.

"I'm not going to give details of those cases, because these are operational decisions made by the police, and you'll understand if they're about to arrest somebody they don't want me to blow the cover," he added.

The subject of accidental releases gained attention after Hadush Kebatu, who was jailed after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel in Epping, was mistakenly freed, leading to the government implementing new checks on those being let out of prison.

The number of prisoners who have been let out in error has risen sharply in the past year, rising from 115 in 2023-2024 to 262 in the following year.

Lammy acknowledged there had been a rise in numbers adding: "I want to bring it down. We have got a mountain to climb."

He said the problem had been partly caused by the system losing 6,000 officers under the previous Conservative government.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has previously blamed the increase on "the confusion created by Labour's botched early release scheme", a project introduced by the government to ease overcrowding in prisons.

Last month, Lammy set out the actions the government was taking to tackle the problem including investing up to £10m for new AI tools to reduce human error and upgrade the paper-based system used by the prison system.

The government has also asked police commissioner Dame Lynne Owens to conduct a review into the mistakes that led to Kebatu's release and what had led to errors across the prison estate.

Kebatu was re-arrested two days after his release and has now been deported to Ethiopia.