Five inmates released in error, union says

 A prisoner has been mistakenly released from a jail in Hertfordshire in the past week, a union has said.

The Prison Officers' Association (POA) said the inmate was set free from HMP The Mount on the outskirts of Bovingdon.

The union claimed there had been five releases made in error in the same week that migrant sex offender Hadush Kebatu was set free by mistake.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) disputed the POA figure and said it had introduced "stronger release checks".

The Mount is a Category C men's prison which was built on the site of a former RAF station.

It has a capacity of 1,028 prisoners.

It was named by the POA as one of four places where mistaken releases had taken place within the last seven days.

The POA's national chairman, Mark Fairhurst, told the BBC: "Over the last 12 months, there have been 262 releases in error.

"And only this week, over the the last seven days, there have been five from five separate prisons."

He continued: "Are staff being adequately trained? Are the workloads excessive?"

Mr Fairhurst said there had been releases from HMP Pentonville in north London, HMP Durham and from Reading Crown Court, as well as at The Mount.

The number of mistaken releases for 2024-25 is more than twice the number in the previous year, when 115 inmates were freed through error.

The Ministry of Justice disputed the number of mistaken releases from the last seven days, but declined to say where any of them happened.

The POA declined to provide any further details of individual incidents.

Kebatu, who was jailed for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in Epping in Essex, was brought back into custody two days after being set free.

He has since been deported from the UK.

An MoJ spokesperson said: "Releases in error have been increasing for several years and are another symptom of the prison system crisis inherited by this government.

"As well as building more prison places and reforming sentencing, we have introduced mandatory, stronger prisoner release checks to keep our streets safe and protect the public."