Britain's prison 'competency crisis' pinpointed as Epping hotel migrant is rearrested: 'Something is terribly wrong!'

In a manhunt that lasted almost 48 hours, Hadush Kebatu was rearrested by police in London after being accidentally released from HMP Chelmsford.

Commander James Conway, who oversaw the search for Kebatu, said it had been a "diligent and fast-paced investigation" led by specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police, supported by Essex Police and the British Transport Police.

Discussing the error on GB News, Mr Hadfield said: "It was, quite frankly, a remarkable story. You had Kebatu wandering around London, in a very sort of Mr. Bean-ish way, and honestly I don't think that he knew that there was this entire manhunt going on for him.

"He was wandering around in his grey tracksuit with an avocado bag, just doing what he was doing. And as we saw from eyewitness accounts of his arrest, he went pretty easily."

Asked by host Eamonn Holmes how it was possible for Kebatu to be mistakenly released from prison, Mr Hadfield stated: "There is something clearly critically wrong with the prison service and their early release system.

"If you look at the number of accidental releases from around the year 2004 until a few years ago, it was around 50 releases a year. And then from 2020, really from kind of when lockdown happened, you noticed there was a bit of an increase in 2022. 2023 was 81.

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"The next year after that, it was around 150. And this year, the previous year to date has been 282. So something over the last few years institutionally has changed, so that we are getting so many more people accidentally released. I think we have a massive competency crisis within our prison system and frankly, within the state generally."

Highlighting another case at HMP Chelmsford where a criminal was mistakenly released, the journalist explained: "HMP Chelmsford also released somebody from prison, a convicted fraudster, after they were just sent in a fake letter, supposedly from the Royal Courts of Justice saying that this man should be released.

"And they took it completely at face value, which is insane. But there are clearly not enough checks, there's something going terribly wrong in the system, and we still have no idea what it is yet, but hopefully this inquiry will figure out what it was."

As host Ellie Costello put forward the argument that the prison service is "understaffed and overworked", Mr Hadfield responded: "There's often times everyone will say it's the NHS, for example, the problem will always be there's just not enough money, but sometimes there really is the competency crisis as well.

"That's the thing, we just cannot tell what is going on here. But I am concerned that there seems to be more of an uptick in the hiring of foreign nationals for the prison service and the state in general.

"If people coming from overseas, perhaps they can't speak English maybe, they can't necessarily be trained properly. Perhaps that's one of the reasons, and I do think understaffing would probably be a factor as well."

Highlighting the general "breakdown" of state services, he concluded: "But generally if you look at how the state seems to have broken down over the last few years, not just the prison service, there seems to be a lot of people in say social care, the NHS, the Prison Service, the Border Force, whatever it may be, who just can't seem to do their job properly.

"I do think probably there is a lot of money that's being wasted in the state generally that probably should be directed to hiring the right people for the job. And then also, I am concerned that there are the people who are doing the job right now that are not them."