AI chatbots could help stop prisoner release errors, says justice minister | Prisons and probation

Artificial intelligence chatbots could be used to prevent prisoners from being accidentally released from prison, a justice minister told the House of Lords on Monday.

Lord Timpson said HMP Wandsworth had been given the “green light” to use artificial intelligence (AI) after a specialist team was sent to come up with “some quick solutions”.

A double manhunt has been launched after a sex offender and a fraudster were wrongly released from prison in south-west London last week.

Release errors over the past fortnight have been seized upon by opposition MPs as evidence of ministers’ helplessness in the face of chaos in the criminal justice system.

Chancellor David Lammy is expected to address parliament about the number of missing prisoners when MPs return on Tuesday.

It appears that AI can be used to read and process paper documents; Help staff cross-reference names to ensure inmates are no longer hiding their past crimes behind aliases; combine different data sets; and calculate publication dates and sentences.

Currently, most of this work is done by inexperienced staff using calculators and reams of paper.

Answering questions in the upper house on Monday, Timpson said: “The number of discharges per prison varies significantly. At HMP Gartree there is an average of two discharges a year… while at Wandsworth the number is 2,000.”

“But that’s why the digital team went to HMP Wandsworth last week to look at what some quick fix opportunities were for adopting digital technology.

“There was an AI team that went in and they thought, to give you a few examples, an AI chatbot would be really helpful and also cross-referencing nicknames because we know some criminals have over 20 nicknames.”

He added: “We’ve given the team the green light to go ahead with this.”

Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was arrested following a police search on Friday after he was mistakenly released on October 29.

He was serving a sentence for trespassing with intent to steal, but had previously been convicted of indecent exposure.

It is understood his visitor visa to the UK expired after arriving in 2019 and he is in the process of being deported.

Another prisoner, Billy Smith, 35, who was accidentally released from Wandsworth on Monday after being sentenced to 45 months in prison for multiple fraud offences, handed himself back in on Thursday.

The accidental release of the two men increased pressure on Lammy, who days earlier announced a new checklist for prison staff following the mistaken release of sex offender Hadush Kebatu on October 24.

Kebatu, who arrived in England on a small boat, caused chaos in Epping, Essex, by sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman. He was mistakenly released from Chelmsford prison and made at least four attempts to return to prison. He was eventually caught in Finsbury Park, north London, and given money while being deported to Ethiopia.

According to government data, 262 prisoners were mistakenly released in the 12 months to March this year, a 128% increase on the previous year. The vast majority (233) occurred in prisons, and the remaining 29 occurred in the courts.

According to unions and governors, there has been a recent increase in errors due to complex early release schedules and a paper-based system; This means that many documents are lost among prisons, courts and the Ministry of Justice.

The chief inspector of prisons said the recent release of large numbers of prisoners too early was “a symptom of a system approaching breaking point”.

Writing in the Telegraph on Sunday, Charlie Taylor said the increasing number of erroneous early statements was “shameful and potentially dangerous”.

Over the weekend, it was reported that four criminals who were mistakenly released had not been caught; two of them were released in June this year and two in 2024.

On Monday, sources within the government claimed that one of them had been detained.

But in a sign of the behind-the-scenes crisis in detention, it became clear that he was never mistakenly released and was miscounted among those released.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “These cases reflect the nature and scale of the prison crisis this government has inherited.

“We’ve made it clear there can’t be an overnight solution. That’s why we’re building 14,000 more prison places and sending technologists to modernize the system and provide immediate support to staff.”