'12 more prisoners have been mistakenly released in last month, two at large', says UK deputy PM

The Deputy Prime Minister and justice secretary of the United Kingdom, David Lammy, has revealed that 12 more prisoners have been mistakenly freed in the past month and two of them are still missing. He was speaking on BBC Breakfast that although the problem continues, but the number of errors is starting to go down because the system has been improved. In mid-November, Lammy told House of Commons that 91 prisoners in England and Wales had been accidentally released between April 1 and October 31 this year.

“Well, I said to parliament a few weeks ago, I released data at that point, and there had been 91 releases in error up to that point, there have been 12 since then, two are currently at large", explained by Lammy on Tuesday (Dec 2), as reported by The Guardian.

He further said that two prisoners were still missing and also confirmed that those prisoners were not violent or sexual offenders.

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Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he said he could not give more details because the police are dealing with the situation and do not want their operations revealed. “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. So I can say that there’s been two.”

Lammy earlier revealed that out of 57,000 total releases, more than double the number from the last year, 262 prisoners were wrongly released in this year till March 2025.

This news followed the mistaken release of Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and fraudster Billy Smith from HMP Wandsworth. Smith later handed himself in, and police arrested Kaddour-Cherif.

The Prison Officers’ Association said that these errors are happening because staff are under huge pressure and officers have had to recalculate sentences repeatedly due to several early-release schemes brought in to tackle with the issue of overcrowding.