Government data reveals the number of prisoners mistakenly released more than doubled in the year to March 2025.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) reported 262 such releases between April 2024 and March 2025, a significant jump from 115 in the preceding 12 months.
HMPPS stated in its report that releases in error "remain infrequent", attributing the rise to legislative changes and Labour’s early release scheme, introduced in September 2024.
Thousands of inmates have been freed early since then in a bid to cut jail overcrowding, by temporarily reducing the proportion of sentences which some prisoners must serve behind bars in England and Wales from 50% to 40%.
A number of the 262 were released in error when the early release scheme began, HMPPS said, because of an issue with a repealed breach of restraining order offence.
Asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, who sparked nationwide protests after sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl, was released from custody by mistake on Friday morning.
A Prison Service spokesman said: “We are urgently working with police to return an offender to custody following a release in error at HMP Chelmsford.
“Public protection is our top priority and we have launched an investigation into this incident.”
Those prisoners were rearrested and returned to custody, the report, published this summer, said.
Prisoners are considered “released in error” if they are wrongly discharged from prison or court, and it can happen when a sentence is miscalculated or the wrong person is discharged, among other reasons.
HMPPS said year on year changes in the number of prisoners released in error “should be considered in the context of the number of releases in the same time period and changes in the operational environment”.
Chelmsford’s MP Marie Goldman told the PA news agency the figures showed Kebatu’s release was not “a problem that happened by chance that could never happen elsewhere”.
Saying she was “concerned” by the figure, she added that it demonstrated the need for a rapid public inquiry into Kebatu’s release as there was “obviously something systemic which is broken”.
The Ministry of Justice was contacted for comment.
