David Lammy has said the government has “a mountain to climb” to tackle the prisons crisis and insisted he was “not equipped with all the detail” when questioned in parliament the previous day about a mistaken prisoner release.
After a fraudster mistakenly freed from prison handed himself in on Thursday, the justice secretary said he had been right not to provide details to MPs at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday about the release of a sex offender who remains at large.
It follows intense pressure over the mistaken release of the two prisoners from HMP Wandsworth in south London. William Smith, a convicted fraudster, was filmed waving to cameras and hugging his partner before he walked back into jail on Thursday having been mistakenly released by a court on Monday.
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, a sex offender from Algeria who was released from Wandsworth by mistake last week, remains at large.
The accidental release of the two men intensified pressure on Lammy, who last week announced a checklist to ensure prisoners were not freed in error after the release of Hadush Kebatu on 24 October.
Prison governors were called to a meeting with Lammy in Leicestershire on Thursday. Speaking afterwards, Lammy said the “paper-based” system used to process criminals at prisons, courts and in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) would be overhauled.
“We had 800 errors under the last government; this has now gone on for a generation. Our prison system is in crisis so we have to bear down on this but we have a mountain to climb,” he said.
Lammy has faced scrutiny over his handling of the mistaken release of Kaddour-Cherif after he refused to answer questions put to him on the issue in the Commons on Wednesday.
On Thursday he said parliament had not been misled. “I took the judgment that it is important when updating the house and the country about serious matters like this that you have all of the detail,” he said.
While government sources had insisted that Lammy was briefed about the loss of Kaddour-Cherif on Tuesday night, Lammy told Channel 4 that he found out on Wednesday morning.
“The public have a right to know the facts, and they found out the facts a bit later on in the day,” he said.
On 27 October, the Ministry of Justice said stronger release checks would be introduced immediately. Two days later, Kaddour-Cherif disappeared from Wandsworth prison.
Lammy said his new checks had not been introduced at Wandsworth when the sex offender was released. “We have found out that the release that has caused concern this week was actually before I introduced those checks just a few weeks ago following the release of Kebatu,” he said.
A senior Labour MP said the government “has to take responsibility” for the crisis. Andy Slaughter, the chair of the Commons justice committee, told Sky News that the prisons system was “chaotic” and suffered from inadequate staffing and lack of modern technology.
Asked who was to blame for the situation, he told Sky News: “The government has to take responsibility, the Labour government going forward. I think if you’re looking at how we’ve got here, you’re talking about years if not decades. And it’s not one issue, it’s an accumulation of issues.”
The number of prisoners being released by mistake has more than doubled in a year, official figures show. In the year to March, 262 people were freed in error, compared with 115 the previous year, according to data from the MoJ.
Prison sources say the overcrowding crisis is partly to blame for the sharp increase in “releases in error” – the official description for the mistakes.
The Metropolitan police continued to appeal to the public over the whereabouts of Kaddour-Cherif, who the force believes is still in London just over a week after his release.
“We are actively searching for Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, who was released in error from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday 29 October,” the Met said. “He is believed to be in London and has links to Tower Hamlets and Westminster. If you see him, please call 999 immediately.”
Kabatu was wrongly released from Chelmsford prison and attempted to walk back into prison at least four times. He was eventually apprehended in Finsbury Park, north London, and given money as he was deported to Ethiopia.
