At a glance
• An AI chatbot is to be deployed in crisis-hit HMP Wandsworth to stop more inmates being wrongly freed
• The Government has given the green light to the jail in southwest London using AI to try to toughen up release checks
• Forty more inmates could be wrongly released before Christmas from jails across the country if tighter security is not implemented, a minister has admitted
An AI chatbot is to be used in HMP Wandsworth as a “quick fix” to try to stop more inmates being wrongly freed from the crisis-hit prison.
Lord Timpson said the southwest London jail had been given the "green light" to use artificial intelligence after a specialised tech team was sent in to try to toughen up checks before inmates are released.
A double manhunt was launched recently following the mistaken freeing of an Algerian sex offender and a fraudster from the prison.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was wrongly released on October 29 before being arrested more than a week later in Islington, north London after a police search.
He tried to deny to police he was a wrongly freed prisoner but they kept him detained after confirming his identity.
Kaddour-Cherif was serving a sentence for trespass with intent to steal and had previously been convicted for indecent exposure.
He is understood to have overstayed his visitor's visa to the UK after arriving in 2019 and was in the process of being deported.
Another prisoner, Billy Smith, 35, who was accidentally freed from Wandsworth after having been sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences, handed himself back in on Thursday.
Responding to questions in the upper chamber on Monday, Lord Timpson said: "The number of releases per prison varies dramatically.
"In HMP Gartree, they average two releases a year, whereas, as I previously said, in Wandsworth, it is 2,000.
"But that is why the digital team last week went into HMP Wandsworth to look at what are the opportunities for some quick fixes to embrace digital technology.
"We had the AI team that went in and to give you a couple of examples - they think an AI chatbot would be really helpful, and also a cross referencing for aliases, because we know some offenders have more than 20 aliases.
"So it is examples like that, and we've given them, we've given the team, the green light to get on with that."
HMP Wandsworth is suffering from acute staffing shortages.
Many prisons also rely heavily on paperwork rather than a computerised system for the release of inmates.
Justice Secretary David Lammy has faced heavy criticism, including from within the Cabinet, over his handling of the crisis over inmates being freed by mistake.
Ministers have admitted that 40 more prisoners could be wrongly released before Christmas from jails around the country unless tougher checks are introduced.
The crisis escalated into a huge public storm after Epping sex offender Hadush Kebatu was freed in error from HMP Chelmsford, before being re-arrested and deported to Ethiopia.
The former asylum seeker, who had been living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, when he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl and a woman, was given a £500 payment after threatening to disrupt his removal.
