Only a matter of time before someone who is accidentally released kills someone, warns former attorney general

A former Attorney General has warned that the rate of prisoners being accidentally released means it is “only a matter of time” before one of them kills.

Speaking on GB News Sir Michael Ellis said: “If this carries on happening, it’s only a matter of time before someone who’s accidentally released kills someone. At the rate of three a week this is going to happen. It’s a really serious problem, and this problem is systemic.

“It’s true that there has been an under investment in the prison system. But what’s happening here is that before someone is released, there ought to be checks. There ought to be some type of system check that has a judge said not to release them? Is there any doubt about that whatsoever?

“Because the failure to check is then resulting in the wrong people being released. That shouldn’t happen, not in today’s day and age when we’ve got more than just a visual identification.

“There should be prison numbers, fingerprints, all types of electronic ID. It’s happening because of a systemic failure. There’s a massive under investment in the prison service, that’s been the case for 20 or 30 years, by the way, this is not a political point.

“The truth is, you have to invest more money in prisons because we need to imprison more people for committing offences.

“As it is, this government has made it easier to release prisoners. It’s now harder than ever for judges to actually send anyone to prison, particularly for periods of less than 12 months.

“It gets even worse, if people are being wrongly released, in some cases, a lot longer than a few months early.

“Can you imagine if the lottery was giving millions of pounds to the wrong people every week? They’d soon do something about it.

“It isn’t rocket science to make sure you’re not releasing the wrong person and frankly, there’s no excuse for it. Under investment is one thing, but this is something that should be being nipped in the bud.

“Just a few a week is not good enough, because one of those people could go on to commit really serious offences.”