Prisoner mistakenly released in UK turns himself in

One of two prisoners mistakenly released from Wandsworth Prison in England has handed himself back in, while the hunt continues for another prisoner also released in error.

Billy Smith, 35, was accidentally released from the London prison on Monday.

Another inmate from the same prison, 24-year-old Algerian national Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, was mistakenly released last Wednesday 29 October.

Police are still searching for him.

Kaddour-Cherif is serving a sentence at Wandsworth for trespass with intent to steal, but had previously also been convicted for indecent exposure.

He was freed from the prison, which was put into special measures last year, on 29 October, but the mistake was only reported to the Metropolitan Police on Tuesday, the force said.

It is understood the Algerian national is not an asylum seeker, but is in the process of being deported after he overstayed his visa.

Smith, who has links to the Woking area, was freed on Monday. He had been sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences on the same day he was accidentally freed.

Read more: UK police arrest wrongly-released asylum seeker jailed for sexual assault

Prison system in 'utter chaos'

Several prisoners are mistakenly released from British prisons each week, a minister has said.

Concerns have been raised about the prison system in the UK, which has been grappling with overcrowding after the number of inmates in England and Wales doubled in the last 30 years.

The British government estimates that 262 prisoners were released mistakenly in the 12 months to March 2025 - marking the fourth consecutive year of increase and more than double the 115 reported the previous year.

"The system is in utter chaos," Alex Davies-Jones, a minister in the justice department, told Times Radio.

"We are deporting more foreign prisoners than ever before," she said.

"We're also going to be deporting them on sentencing, rather than waiting for them to serve time in our prisons."

The accidental releases have also increased pressure on David Lammy, Britain's justice minister and deputy prime minister, who told parliament yesterday that he had toughened the rules to fix the problem, without revealing that he had known about the recent mistakes.

Ms Davies-Jones blamed the crisis on 14 years of "chronic austerity and underfunding in our public services", as well as the failure to build more prisons, under the previous Conservative government.

Additional reporting by Reuters