Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners who were serving an indeterminate public protection sentence were (a) released in error and (b) subsequently recalled to prison in each of the last five years.

We are not able to release figures for the information requested as low numbers are not disclosed to prevent disclosure of individual identity in accordance with the Data Protection Act, 1998. This applies to values of 5 or fewer or other values which would allow values of 5 or fewer to be derived by subtraction.

Information on releases in error are published as part of the HM Prison and Probation Service Annual Digest. The latest publication can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-hm-prison-and-probation-service-digest-2017-to-2018

Releases in error are rare and in the vast majority of cases offenders are returned to custody very quickly. We work closely with the police to recapture those at large and investigate each incident thoroughly to see what lessons can be learned.