One of the prisoners mistakenly released from HMP Wandsworth handed himself in amid mounting pressure on David Lammy over his handling of the fiasco, as the hunt continues for a registered sex offender who is still at large.
Billy Smith, 35, was pictured grinning on Thursday morning as he gave himself up three days after being released in error, having been sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences. Wearing a tracksuit, the criminal was filmed hugging his partner and enjoying a cigarette on the jail steps before turning himself in.
The latest blunders were blamed on clerical errors in a system under “relentless strain”.
Meanwhile, the justice secretary insisted he was “not equipped with all of the detail” when he appeared at PMQs on Wednesday and repeatedly failed to answer questions on whether there had been another mistaken release since Epping hotel migrant Hadush Kebatu was wrongly freed last month.
Speaking as builders broke ground at a new 1,700-cell prison in Leicester, Mr Lammy said: “I first found out about this on Wednesday morning. I was in the department, both learning from officials, but also preparing for Prime Minister’s Questions.
“At the despatch box, I did not have all of the detail. That detail was actually released just later, after I had finished at Prime Minister’s Questions. I took the judgement that it is important when updating the House and the country about serious matters like this, that you have all of the detail.
“I was not equipped with all of the detail. And the danger is that you end up misleading the House and the general public. So that is the judgement I took. I think it’s the right judgement.”
His comments come despite journalists previously being informed that Mr Lammy had been told about the release overnight on Tuesday.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer defended Mr Lammy against criticism over his handling of the mistaken prisoner releases, saying it was “right” that the justice secretary was “setting out the facts to the best of his knowledge”.
Speaking to broadcasters from the Cop30 summit in Brazil, Sir Keir said he was “angry and frustrated” by “intolerable” wrongful prisoner releases
Meanwhile, a police manhunt continues for Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, who was mistakenly released from the same prison on 29 October.
He was serving a sentence for trespass with intent to steal, but had previously also been convicted for indecent exposure.
Former HM chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick told the BBC that there is a “longstanding problem” of mistaken prison releases, but blamed the government’s early release scheme for the latest blunders.
He claimed the system “caused confusion in the bits of the prison service that are supposed to calculate how long someone is supposed to spend in prison”.
The Prison Officers’ Association said staff have been under immense pressure to recalculate sentences in the wake of multiple early release schemes to ease overcrowding in recent years.
The Labour government introduced a scheme in 2024 which allowed some offenders to be freed after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, rather than 50 per cent. It followed the Tories’ End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme, which freed some prisoners 35 or 70 days early.
National chair Mark Fairhurst said the mistakes at Wandsworth were the result of “clerical errors”, adding: “The Prison Officers’ Association has repeatedly warned of the mounting pressures on staff and the outdated administrative systems across our prisons.
“It has taken far too long for senior leaders and politicians to acknowledge these issues and take meaningful action.
“Prisons throughout the country are underfunded, understaffed and operating under relentless strain. Dedicated staff are doing their utmost, but too often they are left without the proper support, training or technology to do their jobs safely and effectively.”
A total of 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025, up from 115 the previous year. Over the past decade, the number of wrongful releases has soared by 434 per cent, from just 49 in the year ending March 2015.
In a statement released as prison governors were called in for emergency meetings with ministers, the Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) said mistaken releases are “neither rare nor hidden”, but agreed the scale of them was “deeply concerning”.
It said 0.5 per cent of prisoners are not released on the correct date.
“While that may appear to be a small percentage, in a system managing tens of thousands of releases and transfers each quarter, it does represent a significant operational failure,” a spokesperson added.
They said the rise in errors reflects a system under “unprecedented and sustained pressure” as they hit out at politicians who “showboat and grandstand” over the crisis.
“Successive governments have accepted this level of risk for decades,” the PGA added. “In that context, it feels disingenuous to see politicians attempt to extract political gain from a prison system in crisis.”
Its concerns were echoed by the Law Society, which said it is “no surprise” the justice system is failing after “decades of neglect”.
Vice-president Brett Dixon added: “The chaos in our prisons reflects the wider crisis across the criminal justice system.
“The crisis will not be addressed by politicians seeking easy headlines. It is the result of poor decisions from successive governments.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said there has been an “explosion in accidental prisoner releases” and blasted Mr Lammy’s handling of the crisis as an “embarrassment”.
Speaking on a visit to JCB Academy, she said: “We know that mistakes happen from time to time. What we have seen now is an explosion in accidental prisoner releases, many of them foreign criminals, many of them sex offenders. This should not be happening.
“We know that there will always be times when mistakes occur, but the scale at which it is happening is causing real worry, and what we saw yesterday with David Lammy unable to answer very simple questions was an embarrassment.”
The shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick claimed he had no confidence in Mr Lammy, describing his handling of questions at PMQs as “a disgrace”.
“The justice secretary is informed about this on Tuesday night, [and] didn’t come clean,” Mr Jenrick told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I think it’s a disgrace. It’s a total dereliction of duty.”
The mistaken releases from HMP Wandsworth come just weeks after migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was wrongly freed from an Essex prison.
In response, Mr Lammy launched an independent inquiry and vowed to bring in tougher checks on prisoners being released.
Kebatu’s crimes sparked a wave of protests at hotels housing asylum seekers this summer after he sexually assaulted a woman and a 14-year-old girl while he was living at the Bell Hotel in Epping.
