Twelve more prisoners have been mistakenly freed in the past month and two are still at large, David Lammy has said.
Earlier data showed 91 accidental releases took place between April 1 and October 31 this year.
Speaking to broadcasters on Tuesday morning, the Justice Secretary said 12 inmates had been freed in error since he last gave a statement to the Commons on November 11.
He said he had been “reassured” that the two prisoners still missing are not violent or sexual offenders, but refused to give further details about them.
“I’m not going to give details of those cases, because these are operational decisions made by the police, and you’ll understand if they’re about to arrest somebody they don’t want me to blow the cover,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
The Justice Secretary said he was pleased with a “downward trend” in accidental releases after he announced stronger security checks for prisons in the wake of Hadush Kebatu’s mistaken release on October 24.
Mr Lammy admitted last month there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the crisis in the prisons system after the police search for Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, who was freed in error from HMP Wandsworth.
Another prisoner, Billy Smith, 35, who was accidentally released from the same jail, handed himself back, while Kaddour-Cherif was arrested in Finsbury Park.
The blunders intensified pressure on Mr Lammy following the mistaken release of Kebatu, whose arrest for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel sparked protests in Epping, Essex.
Toughened checks were announced for prisons and an independent investigation was launched into releases in error after the now-deported Ethiopian national was accidentally freed from HMP Chelmsford.
Some 262 inmates were mistakenly let out in the year to March 2025 – a 128% increase on the 115 in the previous 12 months, according to Government figures.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick accused Mr Lammy of failing to be straight with the public, while the Liberal Democrats said both Government and the Prison Service must “own up to their failures.”
“Calamity Lammy is utterly clueless,” the Tory frontbencher said.
“The public are consistently being put at risk because of his shambolic management. When will this fiasco end?”
Lib Dem justice spokeswoman Jess Brown-Fuller said: “The public deserves a full explanation about how this has happened again, and how the Government are going to get a grip on this dangerous level of incompetence within our justice system.”
She added: “Both the Government and the Prison Service must own up to their failures and guarantee that these mistakes will stop happening once and for all.”
