Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, who was mistakenly released from Wandsworth prison on 29 October, has been arrested
Kaddour-Cherif was spotted by a member of the public in north London today, police say - here's the Met statement in full
"I'm not Brahim, bro," he says as he's arrested, while an eyewitness tells the BBC Kaddour-Cherif repeatedly shouted "it's not my fault" and kicked a police van
He was found three minutes from where migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was re-arrested after being released from prison in error last month
Two prisoners were mistakenly freed from HMP Wandsworth in London in the past week - the second inmate, William "Billy" Smith handed himself in yesterday
Justice Secretary David Lammy says he's determined to fix a prison system "in crisis" as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch says "criminals are making a mockery of our justice system"
Four people who were freed in error from prisons in the 12 months to March 2025 remain unaccounted for - BBC Verify takes a closer look at the numbers
Watch: Moment falsely-released prisoner Kaddour-Cherif is arrested
Nick Eardley
Political correspondent
This morning, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick criticised David Lammy for suit shopping after learning about the mistaken release of prisoners.
However, sources say the deputy prime minister was not suit shopping on Wednesday morning.
David Lammy is said to have bought his new suit earlier in the week.
Image source, Getty ImagesRory Stewart who served as prisons minister under Theresa May tells Radio 5 Live's Nicky Campbell that a lack of training within the prison system is the key problem.
Prison officers are doing a "very complicated job", often acting as a teacher, social worker and police officer rolled into one, he says.
Then they have to put their riot gear on "like a soldier", he adds.
Despite this, Stewart says, they are "not getting the kind of training, investment and support" you would expect in one of these other jobs.
"Serious training colleges" are needed to deal with the problem, the former minister suggests.
Asked whether the Conservatives have any right to criticise the government, Stewart references cuts made by previous governments and admits: "I and other Tories have a lot of responsibility here."
Chair of the Justice Committee and Labour MP Andy Slaughter has released a new statement calling the two mistaken releases "extremely concerning".
He says: "Events such as this speak to a wider justice system at breaking point.
"Evidence taken by the Justice Committee has laid bare a crisis-hit prison system, starved of investment over many years, which is facing multi-faceted pressures, including overcrowding and understaffing within a decaying prison estate characterised by chaos and instability."
Yesterday, Slaughter spoke with The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 - there's more on his comments in our previous post.
Brian Wheeler
Political reporter
Image source, House of CommonsDavid Lammy certainly grabbed headlines at his first ever deputy prime minister’s question time on Wednesday - but probably not the ones he wanted.
One revelation amid the confusion was that he’d bought a new suit for the big occasion "because my godmother said that she would be watching".
He was trying to explain to MPs why he hadn’t been wearing a Remembrance poppy at the start of the session.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick seized on this detail as he accused Lammy of a "dereliction of duty”.
As the deputy prime minister was informed before PMQs about the accidental release, Jenrick said: "How did David Lammy respond to this? Well, he went shopping. We're told he went to buy a suit the morning after it happened rather than gripping his department."
Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones - sent out to defend her boss on the morning broadcast round - insisted he hadn’t been "out on Oxford Street shopping for a new suit".
"He cracked a joke because his poppy had fallen off his suit," explained Davies-Jones. "I don't think it's appropriate to get into the weeds of if he was shopping or not in the morning."
Sima Kotecha
Senior UK correspondent
Sources tell me that the governor of HMP Wandsworth, Andy Davy, wasn't at the jail on the day that Khaddour-Cherif was mistakenly freed.
Ironically, that is because Davy had been tasked with carrying out the inquiry into how Hadush Kebatu was released by accident from Chelmsford jail in Essex.
In our posts today, there are plenty of references to the mistaken release of Hadush Kebatu.
Let’s take a quick look back at what happened.
Migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was mistakenly released from prison on 24 October.
He was serving a sentence for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex. The high-profile case sparked protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping in July, where Kebatu had been staying while seeking asylum.
He was re-arrested on 26 October in London and put on a flight out of the UK on 28 October.
The government apologised for his mistaken release and pledged to strengthen the prison system to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The mistaken release of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and William Smith happened just days later.
It’s worth noting, though, that release in error isn’t unusual. For example, another five inmates were released in error in the same week as Kebatu, according to the Prison Officers' Association.
The accidental release of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif (C) and William Smith (R) follows the release of Hadush Kebatu (L) on 24 October
Why was Kaddour-Cherif mistakenly released?
It's understood that William Smith was released by mistake because a court error meant his custodial sentence was wrongly entered as a suspended one. But what about Brahim Kaddour-Cherif?
Why were police only told six days after Kaddour-Cherif was freed?
The error leading to Kaddour-Cherif's release happened on 29 October, but police were only informed on 4 November. What's the reason for the delay?
Why didn't the extra checks on prisoner release work?
Justice Secretary David Lammy said the "toughest ever" checks had been brought in after Hadush Kebatu's release. So why did those checks fail?
Former HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick has told the BBC that mistaken prison releases are a "long-standing problem", but the recent surge "seems to be related" to the introduction of the early release scheme.
About 40,000 prisoners in England and Wales have been released early since September 2024 as part of an emergency government scheme to help ease overcrowding in prisons.
"That caused confusion in the bits of the prison service that are supposed to calculate how long someone is supposed to spend in prison," he explains.
Hardwick says that calculating release dates is "complicated", but what's "fundamental" is staff experience.
"We just don't have resilience in the system at the moment to prevent these things from occurring," he says.
We've been telling you that government figures show 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year leading up to March 2025.
Let's bring you more on that.
According to the prison service's annual digest, that's a 128% increase compared to the 115 prisoners released in error in the year ending March 2024.
Of the 262 released by mistake, 233 were from prisons and 29 were released in error by courts.
By Lucy Gilder
As questions are asked about how an Algerian man was let out of prison in error, just weeks after the high-profile mistaken release of Ethiopian sex offender Hadush Kebatu, I’ve been looking into the figures about foreign prisoners.
There were just over 10,700 foreign nationals in prisons at the end of September in England and Wales, according to the latest Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data, external. In total, foreign nationals made up 12% of the total prison population at the time.
More than 60% had been sentenced while a third were on remand, meaning they were waiting for a trial or sentencing hearing.
The most common nationality is Albanian, who made up 10% of the foreign prisoner population. The next two largest were Polish at 7% and Irish at 6%.
The MoJ data also showed that the overall foreign prisoner population was up 3% on the year before and 14% higher than five years ago.
Sima Kotecha
Senior UK correspondent
David Lammy is meeting several prison governors today "to get a view from the front line", a prison staffer tells me.
The staffer says the additional checks introduced after Hadush Kebatu are a "significant burden" on staff and, in some cases, have been taking a day to complete.
There's anger among some governors and senior staff about why the checks were brought in without a consultation.
All of this is expected to be relayed to the justice secretary later.
It could get fiery.
Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent
Image source, UK ParliamentDavid Lammy finds himself doubly pressured this morning.
As justice secretary, he has ultimate ministerial responsibility for the prison system in which just one institution accidentally released two new prisoners in only five days.
And as deputy prime minister, he was standing in at PMQs yesterday when he boasted about tough new checks designed to avoid accidental releases, but decided not to divulge information about these new cases even under repeated questioning from his Conservative opponent.
As a matter of political strategy, that is causing consternation in Labour ranks, where even some ministerial colleagues believe he should have been more candid. The government says this was not possible because Lammy did not yet have accurate information about "key details".
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said Lammy needed to "get a grip" and accused the government of a "dereliction of duty".
Yet he also admitted the previous Conservative government’s record on prisons was "poor and unacceptable", with dozens released from prison by mistake every year during their tenure too.
The government says that austerity means they inherited a prison system in a deep and multi-faceted crisis.
MPs do not return to the House of Commons until Tuesday but it feels unsustainable for Lammy not to speak in public about this before then.
Here's a recap of what's been happening and the key lines from this morning:
The chair of the Justice Select Committee, Andy Slaughter, has said many of the problems in the prison system are "systemic".
Speaking to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 last night, Slaughter, who is also a Labour MP, said: "These [the latest mistaken release of prisoners] are just the symptoms."
As we've been reporting, 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March this year - a 128% increase on 115 in the previous 12 months, according to government figures published in July.
Slaughter said "this is a problem for this government to solve", but added he is "not sure" whether the problems are mainly caused by this government, as they have built up over a long time.
"It’s up to David Lammy to get to grips with that," he says.
Let's bring you a bit more from Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones' interview with BBC Breakfast earlier.
She says the government is convening "an urgent meeting" with prison governors today "to try and figure out exactly what is going on on the ground".
Davies-Jones focuses on the "reams of paper" that prison staff have to deal with - saying tech experts will be brought in to help.
Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the Prison Officers Association, has been explaining just how complicated the justice system is earlier on BBC Breakfast.
"Releases in error are happening on average 22 a month," Fairhurst says. "Only now it is in the spotlight."
"We realise that the entire criminal justice system at this moment in time is in complete meltdown. It is not just prisons, it is probation, it is the court, it is the police.
"We want a royal commission to discover what has gone wrong and more importantly put it right."
Image source, PA MediaShadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, speaking this morning, has called the situation a "complete and utter shambles".
Appearing on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he points to David Lammy's comments after Hadush Kebatu's release, saying Lammy would put more robust checks in place.
"It took six days for the prison service supposedly to even become aware this has happened" and inform the police, Jenrick says, "who are now a week behind in the manhunt to find him".
The shadow minister criticises Lammy's performance at PMQs yesterday and accuses him of a "total dereliction of duty".
Speaking about mistaken prison releases more generally, Jenrick underlines "every single accidental release [...] is unacceptable".
He acknowledges there were such releases under the previous Conservative government, but says the figure "has increased dramatically" under Labour.
Calling for more prisons to be built, he adds: "What the British people want to see now are proper checks put in place".
"That is a specific administrative failure by the Ministry of Justice overseen by David Lammy," Jenrick says.
The minister is lastly asked about Labour's proposals to reform sentencing, which would allow prisoners to be released early.
She says there's a "crisis" in the justice system, and criticises the previous Conservative government for building only 500 new prison places in 14 years.
Labour, she says, will build 14,000 places - but adds that to avoid being in this situation again, we "need to break the cycle".
She points to work on electronic monitoring and investment in probation, pledging that under this government there will always be a prison place whenever needed.
Asked about comments from the national chair of the Prison Officers' Association, who said the entire system is in meltdown, Davies-Jones repeats funding commitments but says the problem "won't be fixed overnight".
Davies-Jones says the government needs to "make sure our prison system is fit for the future" and that the prison service is recovering from "14 years of austerity", referring to the policy of the previous government.
"This is going to take long-term vision and long-term change - which we are delivering," she tells BBC Breakfast.
The minister also says more foreign national offenders should be deported when they are sentenced.
"Being in this country is a privilege not a right," she says.
Davies-Jones is now asked why the problem is getting worse - with 262 mistaken releases now happening in a year.
She acknowledges that at the end of the previous Conservative government, there were 17 accidental releases a month, and that figure is now 22.
The minister points to issues including the amount of paperwork involved, and says the government is using tech experts to help improve the system.
Asked about David Lammy's new checks, which he said he would put in place after Kebatu's release, Davies-Jones says he is on a visit this morning "breaking new ground" on building a new prison - adding that the media will be hearing from him later today.