Searches were underway in the U.K. on Wednesday for two men who were mistakenly released from prison — the second and third such incidents in two weeks and part of a growing trend of mistaken releases that have put the government under fire.
London's Metropolitan Police said it was informed by England's prison service on Tuesday afternoon that a 24-year-old was "released in error" from Wandsworth prison, in southwest London, on Oct. 29.
The suspect has been identified as Algerian national Brahim Kaddour Cherif. Police said he is a registered sex offender who was convicted of indecent exposure last year, sentenced to an 18-month community order and put on the sex offenders' register for five years.
The BBC reported that Cherif last appeared in court in September, charged with failing to comply with requirements for convicted sex offenders.
"Cherif has had a six-day head start but we are working urgently to close the gap and establish his whereabouts," Paul Trevers, who is overseeing the police investigation, said in a statement.
The second man mistakenly released, 35-year-old William Smith, was let go from the same prison as Cherif on Monday, police in Surrey said. He was released the same day he appeared at a hearing where he received a 45-month sentence for multiple fraud offenses.
"I am absolutely outraged and appalled by the mistaken release of a foreign criminal wanted by the police. The Metropolitan police is leading an urgent manhunt, and my officials have been working through the night to take him back to prison," David Lammy, U.K. deputy prime minister and justice secretary, said in a statement after reports emerged of the first mistaken release, according to the BBC.
"Victims deserve better and the public deserve answers. That is why I have already brought in the strongest checks ever to clamp down on such failures and ordered an independent investigation, led by Dame Lynne Owens to uncover what went wrong and address the rise in accidental releases which has persisted for too long," Lammy said.
A spokesperson for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called that release "utterly unacceptable" and said the issue of accidental prisoner releases "needs to be dealt with, and the system needs to be reformed and the appropriate checks need to be in place to stop this type of thing from ever happening," according to The Guardian.
Just last week, the accidental release of Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian man jailed for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, triggered a two-day manhunt and his eventual deportation. British authorities agreed to give him the equivalent of about $600 to get on a plane, rather than filing a new legal challenge to his deportation.
The number of prisoners released from U.K. prisons by mistake has more than doubled in the last year, according to government data analyzed by Britain's Telegraph newspaper.
About 262 prisoners were mistakenly released from March 2024 to March 2025, compared to 115 during the same period the previous year, the Telegraph reported.
An official review of the issue has begun, but Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and adviser to U.K. government ministers, cited the overcrowding of Britain's prisons as a reason for the rise in accidental releases.
Overcrowding has brought more pressure on the prison managers to get offenders out as quickly as possible, which has led to more movement of prisoners within the prison system, Acheson told the Telegraph newspaper.
"It is quite possible that one of the reasons for the increase in these mistakes has been the push and imperative to get people out," Acheson told the Telegraph.
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