Prisons are expected to begin enhanced checks before inmates are released after a man who sexually assaulted a young girl was mistakenly freed from jail.
The justice secretary, David Lammy, will set out a series of measures aimed at strengthening the system in England and Wales as he faces questions from MPs in parliament about the error.
The former asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu was wrongly freed from HMP Chelmsford on Friday morning, instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.
The Ethiopian national, who had been living at the Bell hotel in Epping, in Essex, when he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, later travelled to London. He was arrested on Sunday morning in Finsbury Park after a two-day manhunt.
The father of Kebatu’s teenage victim said he hoped the sex offender, whose application for asylum was rejected, would be “deported immediately”. Lammy said that should happen after he was questioned by police later this week.
The communities secretary, Steve Reed, told broadcasters on Monday he shared their “frustration and fury” as he conceded the justice system was “broken”.
He said his cabinet colleague Lammy would be announcing “a strengthened series of checks to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again”.
According to government figures published in July, 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025 – a 128% increase on 115 in the previous 12 months.
Reed said there had been no change in policy under Labour that led to the rise and blamed the situation on staffing cuts made by the previous Tory administration. “If the previous government cut the number of staff by a third, if they fail to build prison places, I’m afraid then disasters will happen,” he told Times Radio.
However, Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, said he had yet to see detail of extra checks that prison governors had been ordered to undertake.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I haven’t actually seen the checklist itself. I can absolutely understand that ministers are furious about this case and want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Is it proportionate? Well, we’ll have to look at the checklist over the course of this week.”
Lammy said he would announce an independent inquiry into what happened on Monday following widespread condemnation of the error among opposition critics.
Following Kebatu’s arrest, Chelmsford’s Liberal Democrat MP, Marie Goldman, called for a “rapid” national investigation, saying: “It’s unacceptable that the safety of my constituents, and the people of London, was ever put at risk. The Prison Service had several chances to fix it and failed. The government has serious questions to answer and major work to do to make the system fit for purpose. It certainly isn’t at the moment.”
The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, said Lammy and the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, had questions to answer over the case, and should apologise “for their failures”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said that “under Labour, victims are failed, criminals walk free and trust in policing has collapsed”.
Keir Starmer confirmed an investigation had been ordered to establish what went wrong, adding: “We must make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
A prison officer has been suspended while an investigation takes place.
It is understood Kebatu, who crossed the Channel in a small boat to enter the UK on 29 June, left prison with an amount of personal money but was not given a discharge grant to cover subsistence costs.
He was convicted of making inappropriate comments to a 14-year-old girl before he tried to kiss her on 7 July. His trial also heard that a day later, he sexually assaulted a woman by trying to kiss her, putting his hand on her leg and telling her she was pretty.
Kebatu was found guilty of five offences after a three-day trial at Chelmsford and Colchester magistrates courts in September, and his sentencing hearing was told it was his “firm wish” to be deported.
