More Prisoners Freed by Mistake in Nine Months of Labour Than Previous Three Years Combined
Official data show 199 mistaken releases in nine months — more than in the previous three years combined.
In the past fortnight, three separate cases have made national headlines:
A convicted sex offender from Ethiopia, Hadush Kebatu, was freed from Chelmsford Prison instead of being deported.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, an Algerian national jailed for sexual offences, walked out of Wandsworth Prison — and the prison service didn’t even tell the police for six days.
And William Smith, a British fraudster, was released the same week after a court mistakenly ruled his 45-month sentence was suspended. He later handed himself back in — caught on CCTV walking back through the gates.
Three serious criminals. Three prisons. Three failures — all within two weeks.
So just how big a problem is this?
📊 Nine months of Labour – and a record number of mistakes
If we look at the nine months since Labour took power, the picture is stark. Between July 2024 and March 2025, 199 prisoners were released in error. That’s more than the previous three years combined.
That’s 199 mistaken releases in nine months under Labour — compared with 193 in the previous three years. And those figures stop at March 2025 — before the latest scandals at Chelmsford and Wandsworth.
📈 For context: official HMPPS data show the 262 total errors in the full 2024/25 financial year were the highest in at least twenty years — far above the typical range of 40–70 per year that held from 2006 to 2021.
In other words, the number of mistaken releases has more than quadrupled since the long-term average, and tripled in just two years.
⚙️ The rise — and the early-release scheme shambles
The sharp increase coincides with Labour’s emergency early-release scheme.
For years, prisons have relied on paperwork and ageing systems — inefficient, but largely stable. That alone can’t explain a sudden doubling of errors.
What changed was policy. Within weeks of taking office, Labour rushed in new early-release rules to ease overcrowding. That decision flooded an already stretched system with complex new procedures and frantic timelines.
The government promised to create “space” in the prisons. Instead, it created chaos.
🚢 From borders to prisons – chaos at every gate
The government’s first duty is to protect the public. Yet it has no control over the border, with small boats still arriving and migrants housed at taxpayers’ expense — some later committing serious crimes. And now, it’s losing control of the prisons too.
Labour introduced its early-release scheme to ease overcrowding, not to reform sentencing. But if prison capacity was really that constrained, why has the number of prisoners jailed for public-order offences risen by 65% since Labour took power?
That rise didn’t happen by accident. After the riots that erupted from Southport to London and Manchester, Starmer’s government launched a sweeping crackdown on public disorder — urging magistrates to impose prison time to “send a message.”
Sentences that once meant fines or community service became jail terms instead, fuelling the surge in public-order prisoners we see today.
As I explored in Jail for Speech, Freedom for Dangerous, this government is building an infrastructure to punish disruption and dissent while releasing violent offenders early — or by mistake.
That’s not justice — it’s mismanagement dressed up as order.
🏛️ A government out of its depth
When ministers can’t control who arrives in the country — or who leaves their prisons — they’re not protecting the public; they’re gambling with it. Labour promised competence. Britain’s prisons tell a different story.
✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions
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