Artificial Intelligence Chatbots could be used to stop prisoners from being wrongly released from prison, a justice minister told the House of Lords on Monday.
Lord Timpson said HMP Wand WandSHOls had been given the “Green Light” to use artificial intelligence (AI) after a specialist team was sent in to find “some quick fixes”.
A double manhunt was launched last week after the wrongful release of a sex offender and a fraudster from a South-West London jail.
The release of the wrongdoings last week was seized upon by opposition MPs as evidence of ministers’ incompetence in the criminal justice system.
David Lammy, the Lord Chancellor, is expected to address Parliament about the number of missing prisoners when MPs return on Tuesday.
Understand that AI can be used to read and process paper documents; Help staff cross-reference names to ensure inmates are no longer hiding their past crimes in liquidation; Mixing different data; and calculate release dates and sentences.
Currently, many of these jobs are completed by inexperienced staff using calculators and reams of paper.
Answering questions in the upper room on Monday, Timpson said: “The number of releases in each prison in a year, while they are revolting in a year, while they are giving birth it is 2,000.
“But that’s why the digital team last week went into HMP WandSSworth to see what the opportunities were for some quick fixes in embracing digital technology.
“We have an Ai team that comes in and, to give you an example of a chatbot that is very helpful, and we know offenders with over 20 aliases.”
He added: “We have given the team the green light to proceed with that.”
Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was wrongfully released on 29 October before being arrested on Friday following a police manhunt.
He was serving a sentence for trespassing with intent to steal, but had previously been convicted for indecent exposure.
He understands that his UK visitor’s visa will be suspended after his arrival in 2019, and is in the process of being deported.
Another prisoner Billy Smith, 35, who was accidentally released from Wandsworth on Monday – after being sentenced to 45 months for a number of fraud offenses – handed himself in on Thursday.
The accidental release of the two men raised by Lammy, which days ago announced a new checklist for prison staff following the wrongful release of sex offender Kebatu on 24 October.
Kebatu, who came to the UK on a small boat, ran riot in Epping, Essex, after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman. He was wrongly released from Chelmsford jail and tried to walk back to jail at least four times. He was eventually caught in FinSbury Park, North London, and given money as he was taken to Ethiopia.
In the 12 months to March this year, 262 prisoners were released by mistake, a 128% increase from 115 last year, according to government data. The majority (233) took place in prisons, while the remaining 29 took place in courts.
According to unions and governors, there has been a recent increase in errors due to complex release procedures and a paper-based system, which means many documents are lost between prisons, courts and the Ministry of Justice.
The chief inspector of prisons said the recent spate of inmates being released early was “a symptom of a system close to breaking point”.
Writing in Sunday’s Telegraph, Charlie Taylor said the growing number of errors in early releases was “embarrassing and potentially dangerous”.
Over the weekend, it was reported that four offenders remained at large after being released by mistake, with two released in June of this year in 2024.
On Monday, sources within the government suggested one of them had been returned to custody.
But in a sign of the crisis behind the scenes inside the custodial estate, he understood that he had not been released from the mistakes and mistakes of those before.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “These cases show the nature and scale of the prison crisis this government has inherited.
“We’re clearly not going to fix it overnight. That’s why we’re building 14,000 places in the prison and sending in tech experts and providing immediate staff support.”