Breakdowns in communications and staffing and security issues show how years of neglect have pushed jails to breaking point
The mistaken release of a second foreign prisoner has forced ministers to re-evaluate their security and release procedures and will once again shine a spotlight on the well-documented problems at HMP Wandsworth.
Much of the concern centres on poor technology and poor communication between prisons, the Ministry of Justice and the courts – the three bodies responsible for overseeing the movement of England and Wales’s 87,000 inmates.
During the government’s emergency prison release scheme in September 2024 to tackle overcrowding, 37 inmates were freed in error after their offences were wrongly logged under repealed legislation.
A computer system designed to automate the calculation of release dates has failed to function as planned, forcing prison staff to work out complex calculations by hand using calculators.
With nearly 20% of prisoners being held on remand, increasing numbers are being transported between prison and courts for hearings.
There are rising complaints from staff that warrants are being lost and misplaced as prisoners are being moved between jails. Without a warrant, staff have no legal power to keep prisoners in custody.
Inexperienced staff are being left with large caseloads of prisoners to process due to the high turnover of people coming through the prison system.
In the 12 months to March this year, 262 prisoners were released in error, a 128% increase from 115 the previous year, according to government data. The vast majority (233) occurred in prisons, while the remaining 29 happened in courts.
These mistakes largely passed without comment until it emerged last month that Hadush Kebatu, the former asylum seeker whose sexual offences and subsequent legal case triggered violent unrest in Essex this summer, had been accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford.
On the day Kebatu was freed, a delivery driver said he saw him return to the prison in a “very confused” state four or five times, only to be turned away by staff and directed to the railway station.
Chaos at HMP Wandsworth was laid bare in September 2023 when a prisoner escaped.
The former soldier Daniel Khalife, later found guilty of spying for Iran, escaped from the south-west London jail by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck. He was caught days later on a canal towpath by a plainclothes detective.
The prison was put into special measures last year and was among 10 jails issued with an urgent notice to improve since November 2022.
The chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said HMP Wandsworth was “still reeling” from Khalife’s escape and that security remained a “serious concern”.
It emerged in court that two guards checked the truck with a torch and mirror and allowed it to leave the prison, despite telling the driver someone was missing.
In 2024, inspectors said the turmoil they found at the “severely overcrowded” HMP Wandsworth was the result of “sustained decline permitted to happen in plain view of leaders”. They warned that guards did not always know where prisoners on their wings were, despite an investment of almost £900,000 since the escape.
David Lammy, the justice secretary, will want to know why the five-page set of checks that he introduced just over a week ago failed to stop the latest release errors.
The instructions required more senior prison staff to sign off a release, with a duty governor made personally responsible for an inspection of release procedures.