Good morning. Maybe the most gobsmacking detail about the accidental release of Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford was this, from a delivery driver who was delivering equipment to the prison as he left: Kebatu, who was serving a sentence for sexual assault and was due to be deported, appeared baffled as he walked free, and lingered outside the gates for an hour and a half before heading away. “They [the officers] were basically sending him away, saying, ‘Go, you’ve been released, you go,’” the driver told Sky News. “He kept scratching his head and saying, ‘Where do I go, where do I go?’”
On its face, that might look like incompetence. But the fiasco of Kebatu’s release may point to much bigger issues in the prison system. Yesterday, the justice secretary, David Lammy blamed “human error” – while the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) called the suspension of a single officer “unjust”.
