Twelve more prisoners in England and Wales released in error in last month | Prisons and probation

The British justice minister announced that prisoners continue to be released by mistake, with 12 prisoners mistakenly released from prison since November.

David Lammy told BBC Breakfast that despite the latest figures, “the trend is downwards” after improvements were made to the system.

Lammy told the House of Commons in mid-November that there had been 91 accidental releases in England and Wales between April 1 and October 31 this year.

He said on Tuesday: “I told parliament a few weeks ago, at that point I published the data and up to that point there had been 91 false disclosures, since then there have been 12, two of which are currently at large.”

Lammy said the two inmates were still at large and he confirmed they were not violent or sexual offenders.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “I won’t go into detail about these cases because they are operational decisions made by the police and you will understand that if they are about to arrest someone they don’t want me to reveal it.

“So I would say there are two.”

Asked if they were violent or sexual offenders, Lammy said: “I was assured that they were not linked to those two.”

Lammy had previously said that 262 of the 57,000 prisoners released by March 2025 were released by mistake, a 128% increase compared to the previous year.

The revelation comes after Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and fraudster Billy Smith were mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth. Smith surrendered and police caught Kaddour-Cherif last week.

Days earlier, Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian national, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford despite being convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman shortly after arriving in the UK on a small boat.

Lammy confirmed that the error that led to Kaddour-Cherif’s release occurred in September, before tighter security checks were implemented.

The Prime Minister has faced criticism for his handling of the issue after he repeatedly refused to confirm whether any more asylum seekers had been mistakenly released since Kebatu.

Lammy said he learned of the error on Wednesday morning, but the detail was revealed shortly after he finished the PMQs.