Mistakenly released prisoner hands himself in after four-day manhunt

Surrey Police has now confirmed he turned himself back in at the same prison.

Officers are continuing their efforts to track down Algerian national Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, mistakenly released from the same prison on October 29.

A spokesman from Surrey Police said: "We are cancelling our appeal to help find wanted 35-year-old William Smith, who was released in error from HMP Wandsworth on Monday, November 3.

"Smith handed himself in to HMP Wandsworth today."

According to ITV News, which filmed his return, he was accompanied by his partner, whom he hugged before speaking to prison staff at the prison’s entrance.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said: "William Smith is back in custody.

"The spike in mistaken releases is unacceptable. We’re modernising prison systems, replacing paper with digital tools to cut errors. We’re working with police to recapture Brahim Kaddour-Cherif."

Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones said prison chiefs were being summoned for a meeting on Thursday and a team of digital experts had been tasked with overhauling the "archaic" paper-based system of prisoner records.

Ahead of a meeting with ministers, the Prison Governors Association (PGA) described releases in error as "neither rare nor hidden", but said the scale of them was "deeply concerning", with 262 prisoners released in error in the last full year of reporting.

In a statement, the PGA insisted that only 0.5 per cent of prisoners are not released on the correct date.

However, they added: "While that may appear to be a small percentage, in a system managing tens of thousands of releases and transfers each quarter, it does represent a significant operational failure."

The conditions to "reduce this figure to zero simply do not exist", the association said, adding it "feels disingenuous to see politicians attempt to extract political gain from a prison system in crisis".

Smith, who has links to the Woking area, was freed on Monday and was sentenced to 45 months for multiple fraud offences on the same day he was accidentally released.

The BBC reported that a clerical error by a court had led to his release, as he was listed as receiving a suspended sentence, rather than one in custody.

Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick accepted the last Conservative Government’s record on prisons was "poor and unacceptable", but that ministers had worked to "keep people in jail" during that time.

Mr Jenrick was pressed about the Tories' record on mistakenly released prisoners on GB News, where Ellie Costello asked the Newark MP about his party's record on the issue.

Ellie said: "Back in 2022, 54 prisoners were released in error. In 2023, 71 prisoners were released in error. In 2024, 87 prisoners were released in error. More and more every year."

Mr Jenrick responded, saying: "No, this is a new issue. Don’t get me wrong every single criminal released accidentally from our prisons is unacceptable.

"I don’t want to see a single criminal released this way. But something is going badly wrong, and the numbers are rising dramatically.

"Over the last ten years, it averaged about 50 criminals being released every year. Last year, it was 262, a 130 per cent increase in a single year.

"This has been a bad issue for a long time, but it has gotten much, much worse under this Labour Government."

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