Any mistaken release of a prisoner is a blow to the criminal justice system and creates a danger to public safety and confidence. So is any escape, abscondment or failure to return after temporary release. Failures of this kind nevertheless occur every year in the UK penal systems – not regularly, but often enough for governments to produce annual statistics about them. They are particularly alarming malfunctions in what is already a seriously flawed and pressurised system.
The mistaken release of two separate prisoners from the same prison, however, is unusually disturbing. Human error seemingly played a part in allowing William Smith to walk out of HMP Wandsworth on Monday, the day he had been sentenced to 45 months for several fraud offences. That was bad enough. But the fact that he turned himself in on Thursday at the prison gates without being caught by a police manhunt simply compounds the record of official incompetence.
