Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he is “angry and frustrated” over the mistaken release of two prisoners from HMP Wandsworth in London, speaking publicly about the situation for the first time as a police manhunt continued for one of the men still at large.
William Smith, who was wrongly freed on Monday after being sentenced to prison for fraud, handed himself in on Thursday and is now back in custody. However, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a 24-year-old Algerian sex offender, remains at large following his mistaken release from Wandsworth on October 29. Police were not informed of his release until Tuesday.
Speaking from the COP30 environment summit in Brazil, Starmer described the wrongful releases as “intolerable” and said a review was underway to establish what had “gone wrong,” adding: “Systems must be in place to stop this happening again.” While blaming the strain on the prison system on “failures” under the previous Conservative government, he acknowledged: “I recognise it’s our job to step up and to fix this.”
Justice Secretary David Lammy, who had previously promised the “strongest checks ever” following the accidental release of migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford in Essex last month, announced in a social media video that a “digital rapid response unit” would be deployed to all prisons within 48 hours, aimed at “using cutting edge tech to reduce some of the human error” in the release process.
Dame Lynne Owens, a former deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has been tasked with investigating why Kebatu was released and making recommendations to prevent future errors.
Lammy has also come under fire for his conduct at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, when he stood in for Starmer and was asked five times by Conservative MP James Cartlidge whether any other asylum-seeking offender had been accidentally released from prison. Lammy declined to answer the question, despite already knowing at that point about Kaddour-Cherif’s mistaken release.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick accused Lammy of a “dereliction of duty,” while also criticising him for reportedly shopping for a new suit before PMQs rather than managing the crisis. Lammy told MPs on Wednesday he had bought a new suit because his godmother had said she would be watching. Sources close to Lammy have since said he was not shopping on Wednesday morning and purchased the suit earlier in the week.
Speaking on Thursday during a visit to a new prison building site in Leicestershire, Lammy said he had not had “all of the detail” when he faced questions in the Commons and had not wanted to risk misleading MPs.
He acknowledged the rate of mistaken releases was “too high” and said it “has to come down.” He also argued that when asked about his new checks, Kaddour-Cherif had been let out before the tighter rules were implemented.
However, Lammy had told the Commons last Monday that those checks were effective immediately, two days before Kaddour-Cherif’s release. Ministry of Justice sources said Lammy did not misspeak, arguing the mistakes that triggered the release occurred at the end of September, before the new checks took effect on October 27.
Starmer, when asked about the discrepancy, said: “David Lammy can speak for himself on that. And I’m absolutely clear that he’s setting out the facts to the best of his knowledge, and that’s the right thing for him to do.”
Jenrick described the situation as “a total shambles” and said the government had “got to get a grip.”
According to the latest figures, 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the year to March 2025, up 128 percent from 115 the previous year. Sources said that Wandsworth’s governor was not at the prison on the day Kaddour-Cherif was released, as he was conducting the inquiry into the Kebatu case at HMP Chelmsford.
The Prison Governors’ Association said the number of mistaken releases was “deeply concerning” but noted the problem had occurred “under every government’s watch,” warning that achieving zero errors would require “substantial investment in staff training, modern IT infrastructure, and recruitment, all within a system already stretched by competing priorities.” The association said it felt “disingenuous to see politicians attempt to extract political gain from a prison system in crisis.”
Former Conservative Justice Secretary Alex Chalk acknowledged that governments of all parties had historically underprioritised the justice system, noting the Department for Work and Pensions spends the equivalent of the Ministry of Justice’s entire annual budget every two weeks. He also said senior prison leadership “have got to do more to get their house in order.”
