Three prisoners who were wrongly released in England and Wales remain on the run and are being sought by police, David Lammy has confirmed.
A total of 91 prisoners have been freed by mistake between 1 April and 31 October this year – the equivalent of around three per week, according to the latest Ministry of Justice figures published on Tuesday.
Downing Street admitted the figures are “shocking”, and said they are “symptomatic of a system that the government inherited” from the Conservatives.
Justice secretary Mr Lammy told MPs on Tuesday that none of the three that are currently at large are convicted sex offenders. It comes as the government faces mounting pressure over a series of high-profile releases, including that of Epping sex offender Hadush Kebatu.
In the following weeks, an Algerian sex offender and a fraudster from HMP Wandsworth were also accidentally freed, sparking a double manhunt.
Some 262 inmates were mistakenly let out in the year to March 2025 – a 128 per cent increase on the 115 in the previous 12 months, government figures also show.
Of that figure, 87 were of offenders whose main offence was violence against a person, and three whose main offence was a sexual offence
Releases in error can include misplaced warrants for imprisonment or remand, sentence miscalculations or can be a result of mistakes by courts or other authorities, the Ministry of Justice said.
Mr Lammy also defended his decision not to directly answer the Conservatives’ questions on the issue during last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, stating he had not yet been informed if one of those released had been an asylum seeker.
“Given the nature of the opposition’s question, I made a judgement that I would wait until I had all the detail, rather than risk giving an accurate or incomplete or misleading picture to the House about a sensitive case,” he said.
He added that he had also offered an “unequivocal apology” to victims whose perpetrators had been released in error.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the accidental releases of Kebatu and the two prisoners that sparked manhunts were “just the tip of the iceberg”, and that the British public deserved to have the “full picture”.
Mr Lammy admitted on Friday that there is a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prison system.
Prisons minister James Timpson said on Monday there is “no quick fix” to releases in error, and it is “going to take time to get it right”.
A spokesperson for No 10 said: “These numbers, they are symptomatic of a system that the government inherited, of a prison system under severe strain, a failing criminal justice system.
“As we’ve set out previously, the government inherited a [situation] where the male prison estate was running at 99 per cent capacity. That risks the potential breakdown of law and order.
“The public are right to be shocked by these cases. While they are rare, they have been rising year-on-year from an average of nine per month in 2023 to 17 per month the next year.
“And we’re clear that you can’t fix the prisons crisis overnight, but we have taken immediate action, including tougher new release checks, calling in prison governors, sending in tech experts.”
Ethiopian national Kebatu has since been deported, while Algerian national Brahim Kaddour-Cherif was arrested on Friday and is understood to be in the process of being deported.
Kaddour-Cherif was serving a sentence for trespass with intent to steal, but had previously been convicted for indecent exposure.
Billy Smith, who was also accidentally freed from Wandsworth on Monday – after having been sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences, handed himself back in on Thursday.
Stronger security checks were announced for prisons and an independent investigation was launched into releases in error after Kebatu was freed from HMP Chelmsford on 24 October.
Kebatu had been sentenced to 12 months in custody in September for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman, sparking a month of protests outside asylum seeker hotels across the UK.
Over the weekend, it was reported that a total of four such offenders had been released in error, with two released in June this year, and two in 2024.
On Monday, sources within the government suggested that one of these had been returned to custody.
