Two of the four prisoners who are at large were mistakenly released in 2024, according to reports.
The government is under increasing pressure as the details emerged, with the other two on-the-run inmates revealed to have been wrongly freed in June this year.
The mistaken releases of the four offenders mark just some of a number of high-profile cases of prisoners being wrongly freed.
Only a day ago, a sex offender released in error was finally arrested, following a nine-day manhunt. On Friday, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was captured in Islington, north London, after being spotted by a member of the public.
The Algerian national – who has convictions for theft and had previously also been convicted for indecent exposure –was serving a sentence at HMP Wandsworth in southwest London but was mistakenly set free on 29 October.
Kaddour-Cherif’s release piled pressure on justice secretary and deputy prime minister David Lammy, who came under fire for how he dealt with the mistaken release of the prisoner.
Mr Lammy was criticised for his decision not to address the blunder when he appeared at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, despite having been briefed about it and being repeatedly asked about accidental prison releases.
Following the 24-year-old’s arrest, he admitted there was a “mountain to climb” to tackle the prison system crisis.
“That is why I have ordered new tough release checks, commissioned an independent investigation into systemic failures and begun overhauling archaic paper-based systems still used in some prisons”, the justice secretary said in a statement.
Just the day before, another wrongly released prisoner, fraudster Billy Smith, 35, handed himself in on Thursday.
And now, the BBC has reported details of the four other prisoners who are still at large, in revelations that first emerged just hours after Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest.
In response to the reports, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson told The Independent: “The vast majority of offenders released by mistake are quickly brought back to prison, and we will do everything we can to work with the police to capture the few still in the community. These cases only further expose the scale of the crisis in our prisons we inherited. This will not be fixed overnight, but we are using every possible lever to bear down on these errors.”
Following Kaddour-Cherif’s arrest, Chris Philp MP, shadow home secretary, said: “The British public shouldn’t have to be the ones to catch escaped criminals. This is chaos, incompetence, and weakness from top to bottom, and it’s putting people’s safety at risk.”
And shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the unaccounted prisoners revealed “the incompetence of this government”.
“It shouldn’t be left to reporters to uncover the facts. [Justice Secretary] David Lammy must finally come clean about how many prisoners have been accidentally released and how many are still at large.”
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller said the situation is a “disgrace and an omnishambles” and called for Parliament to be recalled from recess.
“It shouldn’t have to take the media to inform the public that prisoners are at large after accidental release”, she said.
“The situation for the government and the justice secretary is grave. The public deserves a full and frank explanation, and a rapid inquiry that stops this from happening.
“Every resource must go into finding these prisoners and warning the public. The Justice Secretary must answer to MPs at the earliest opportunity, with Parliament recalled.”
