Accidental Prison Releases

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The Deputy Prime Minister did not have the accurate information, because the information was changing by the minute; but what was certain is that, when we knew exactly what the situation was, that is what we dealt with and we acted upon it.

We have 57,000 releases from prison—that was March 2024 to 2025. In Wandsworth, which my noble friend mentioned, there are 2,000 releases a year from that prison. So it is important that we get the information right, because we are often dealing with individuals with different aliases and with multiple convictions, and we need to make sure we get it right.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, 10 years ago, when I was reviewing deaths in prison, I spent some time looking at the intake arrangements, which are clearly important in terms of assessing the risk. In the best prisons, that was a very detailed process. Can the Minister tell us whether, in his experience, and not necessarily talking about this particular case, there is a wide variation between prisons in the detail with which they do the process of release, in terms of the information they collect and the information they check?

Secondly, can he tell us how good he feels about—whether this is another area that needs investment—the information flows that take place within prison to make sure that the officer doing the releasing knows precisely the status of individual prisoners and, indeed, which prisoner they are talking to?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. The checklists that we have made more robust are the same checklists across all prisons, but the number of releases per prison varies dramatically. HMP Gartree averages two releases a year, whereas, as I previously said, in Wandsworth it is 2,000. That is why the digital team last week went into HMP Wandsworth, to look at opportunities for some quick fixes to embrace digital technology.

The AI team went in and, to give a couple of examples, they thought that an AI chatbot would be really helpful, along with a cross-referencing for aliases, because we know some offenders have more than 20 aliases. We have given the team the green light to get on with examples like that.

The noble Lord is exactly right that this is about how we deal with this information, and how we make sure it is accurate when we are dealing with often very complex people in a very complex situation.