David Lammy said the government had a “mountain to climb in the prison crisis and insisted he” was not available with all the details about a wrongful prison release.
After a dispute that was wrongly released from prison himself, the Secretary of Justice told the MPS questions about the release of a sex offender.
It followed intense pressure to mistakenly release two prisoners from HMP Wand Wandsworth in South London. William Smith, a convicted felon, was parked with cameras and hugged his partner before he walked back to jail on Thursday.
A sex offender from Algeria, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, who was released from Wandsworth in error last week, remains at large.
The accidental release of the two men was raised by Lammy, who last week announced a checklist to ensure that the prisoners were not released by mistake in Hadush Kebatu on 24 October.
Prison governors were called to a meeting at Lammy in Leicestershire on Thursday. Speaking afterwards, the Lord Chancellor told reporters the “paper-based system used to process criminals in prisons, the courts and the Ministry of Justice (Moj) will 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 will take it but we have a mountain to climb,” he said.
Lammy is facing scrutiny over his handling of the wrongful release of Kaddour-Chinif after he refused to answer questions in the house on Commonsday. Parliament was not misled, he insisted. “I take the judgment that it’s important when updating home and country about serious things like this that you have all the details,” he said.
While government sources insisted Lammy was briefed on Kaddour-Cherif’s disappearance on Tuesday night, Lammy told Channel 4 he found out on Wednesday morning.
“The public has a right to know the facts, and they know the facts later in the day,” he said.
On 27 October, the Ministry of Justice said that stronger release checks would be introduced immediately. Two days later, Kaddour-Cherif disappeared from prison at Sandsworth.
Lammy said his new checks were not introduced at HMP Wand Wandsworth when the sex offender was released. “We know that the release that caused concern this week before I was introduced a few weeks ago after the release of Kebatu,” he said.
A senior Labor MP says the government “must take responsibility” for the wrongly released prisoners crisis. Andy Spiye, the chair of the Commons Justice Committee, told Sky News that the prison system was “messy” and suffered from insufficient staff and a lack of modern technology.
Asked who was to blame for the current situation, he told Sky News: “The government thinks you’re gone for years.
The number of prisoners released by mistake has more than doubled in a year, official figures show.
In the year to March, 262 people were released by mistake, compared to 115 last year, according to data from Moj.
Prison sources say the overcrowding crisis is blamed on a sharp increase in “error releases” – the official description for errors.
The Metropolitan police are continuing to appeal to the public for the whereabouts of Kaddour-Cherif, with the force believed to have been in London for 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. If you see 999 immediately,” the meeting said.
Kabatu was wrongly released from prison in Chelmsford and tried to walk back to prison at least four times. He was eventually caught in FinSbury Park, North London, and given money as he was taken to Ethiopia.