Ministers have been warned against scapegoating prison staff as they struggle to contain the political fallout of the mistaken release of an asylum seeker who sexually assaulted a teenage girl.
As David Lammy, the justice secretary, announced an inquiry and blamed “human error” for the accidental freeing of Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford on Friday, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has questioned why a single member of staff has been “unjustly” suspended.
Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, also said that it would be “very easy to throw an individual at Chelmsford under the bus for this” when it was a systemic problem.
After Lammy said that a stringent inventory would be introduced to stop further mistakes at release, governors have said that “a checklist won’t cut it”.
The former Metropolitan police deputy commissioner Lynne Owens will chair the investigation into why the Ethiopian national was freed on Friday morning instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.
Kebatu, who had been living at the Bell hotel in Epping, Essex when he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, travelled to London after his release and was arrested on Sunday morning in Finsbury Park after a two-day manhunt.
He was set for deportation under an early removals scheme (ERS) for foreign national offenders, but was released into the community in “what appears to have been in human error”, Lammy told MPs.
Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the POA, said that a union member, a discharging manager, was the only person to have been suspended when at least two other more senior staff members were involved in freeing Kebatu.
“One of our members has been unjustly suspended because he is not the only one involved in this entire process. Our thoughts are with him and we will fully support him,” Fairhurst told the Guardian.
The suspended member of staff was responsible for going through the paperwork to ensure that the right prisoner was being released under the right conditions. However, the manager was checking paperwork that had already been processed by more senior staff, it is understood.
Taylor said prisoners being released early, in error or even late was an “endemic problem” that needed to be fixed by Prison Service leaders.
“I think it’s symptomatic of the chaos that we’re seeing within the system, where the number of prisoners who were released early has gone up,” he said.
“Serious mistakes” had been made at HMP Chelmsford, which was a “very busy” reception prison, while an inspection at HMP Pentonville and unpublished findings at HMP Birmingham showed “serious anomalies” of sentence calculations, Taylor said.
“I think it’s very easy to throw an individual at Chelmsford under the bus for this, but this is a systemic problem and the Prison Service needs to take some responsibility as well for failing to fix this issue, which has got much, much worse in the last couple of years,” he added.
Fourteen days before someone’s release, a hub manager in the offender unit checks the paperwork to make sure that the right offender is being let out under the right conditions.
Two days before a prisoner’s release, a governor-grade manager then checks the paperwork, the licence and the warrant to ensure that the right person is being let out.
It is understood that the investigation will centre on whether Kebatu’s status as a prisoner being prepared for deportation was on the paperwork or was missed by someone responsible for carrying out checks.
Allegations of sexual assault against Kebatu led to protests and counter-protests in Epping, where he had been living in asylum accommodation, and eventually outside hotels housing asylum seekers across the country.
He was found guilty of five offences after a three-day trial at Chelmsford and Colchester magistrates courts in September, and his sentencing hearing heard it was his “firm wish” to be deported.
According to government figures published in July, 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025: a 128% increase on 115 in the previous 12 months.
In the Commons on Monday, Lammy confirmed stronger release checks on prisoners would come into force immediately.
Prisons have been issued with a five page “ticklist” that asks officers to check prisoners’ details, as well as their “tattoos and scars” against a photograph, before they are set for release.
However, the extra checks have been criticised by senior prison staff because they will increase workload and put more pressure on a system already struggling to cope.
In a statement, the Prison Governors’ Association said the government must reinvest in prisons after “austerity broke our prisons”. “A checklist won’t cut it,” a statement said.
Lammy said there had been a 30% cut in prison staffing under the Conservatives, and more than half of frontline prison officers now had less than five years’ experience.
He said: “It’s little wonder when the system has been brought to its knees that errors like this happen. We must also be honest that the previous government’s approach to this crisis … has added to a level of complexity and pressure that makes errors more likely.”
The shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, said the incident was a “national embarrassment”.
