Fury at ‘incompetent’ Labour as at least 4 prisoners mistakenly released still at large | UK | News
Sir Keir Starmer is facing increasing criticism after several high-profile cases of prisoners being mistakenly released from prisons. On Friday, it emerged that at least four prisoners who were mistakenly released in England were still at large, the BBC reported. This comes after sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was arrested following a massive manhunt. The Algerian national was one of two men mistakenly released from a London prison.
The second man, William Smith, turned himself in on Thursday, meaning they are both back in custody. Offender Kaddour-Cherif was serving a sentence at HMP Wandsworth for trespass with intent to steal. He was convicted of indecent exposure in November 2024, relating to an incident in March that year. Kaddour-Cherif was given an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders register for five years.
From March to March 262 prisoners were mistakenly released in England and Wales; This means an increase of 147 compared to the previous year.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the unnamed prisoners underlined the “incompetence of this Government”.
“It should not be left to journalists to reveal the facts,” he said. [Justice Secretary] “David Lammy must finally reveal how many prisoners were accidentally released and how many are still at large.”
Recent scandals have sparked a new crisis of confidence in Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Just last month, immigrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu, who attacked a teenage girl and a woman just days after arriving in the UK illegally, was mistakenly released from HMP Chelmsford in Essex.
The Ethiopian national claimed that he waited outside the prison for more than three hours for the person he described as “responsible” for him after he was released.
After a two-day manhunt, he was arrested in a London park and subsequently given £500 from the Home Office for his deportation, sparking widespread outrage.
In a statement, Mr Lammy said: “We have inherited a prison system in crisis and I am appalled by the rate of erroneous releases this has caused.
“I am determined to tackle this problem, but it cannot be solved overnight, there is a mountain to climb.
“So I ordered strict new release controls, launched an independent investigation into systemic failures and began overhauling the old paper-based systems still used in some prisons.”
