The latest episode in the rolling farce that is His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service was this week revealed to be yet another foreign-born sex offender released in error. Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, an Algerian sex-offender, was let out by mistake from HMP Wandsworth over a week ago. He was only recaptured today after nine days on the run.
What steps has the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, taken following this most recent incident?
But now that one of the big questions in Westminster doesn’t concern the whereabouts of the latest pervert erroneously released by the Prison Service, attention is turning to what steps the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, has taken following this most recent incident?
Before this case of mistaken prisoner release was revealed last week, the Minister answered questions in the House of Lords on ‘Prisoner Release Checks’. Yet this week, since this particular incident became public knowledge, we have heard little on the subject from the Minister – is it the SW1 version of Where’s Wally?
A central tenet of our political system is that ministers are accountable for the actions of their Department. And yet the Ministry of Justice appears to be a case-study in the avoidance of accountability.
Following his catastrophic outing at Prime Minister’s Questions this week, the Secretary of State for Justice, David Lammy MP, refused the Speaker’s invitation to return to the House of Commons to explain the unfolding prison crisis. This was apparently after receiving advice that such an appearance would be ‘career suicide’.
Lord Timpson, as Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending, is not merely a Lords spokesman on the issue; he is – at least technically – the minister accountable for the seemingly never-ending catastrophe that is our prison system.
Yet it was not him that was sent out to defend the government’s position in the media on Thursday morning. This unenviable job was given to the Victim’s Minister, Alex Davies-Jones MP. As Davies-Jones soon discovered (and probably anticipated) this was to prove to be an exercise in attempting to defend the indefensible.
Those paying close attention will recall that it was from Wandsworth prison that Daniel Khalife – later convicted of terrorism and espionage offences – escaped in September 2023. An independent review was commissioned to get to the bottom of how this individual – described by police investigators as ‘the ultimate Walter Mitty character’ – was able to stage his break-out. The Ministry of Justice have continued, two years on, to refuse to publish the outcome of that review.
The government have attempted to put the case that erroneous prison releases are an unfortunate result of the state of the Prison Service they inherited from their hapless Conservative predecessors. As Policy Exchange has previously made clear, there is no doubt that the record on prisons of the Conservative governments between 2010 and 2024 was shamefully poor.
But the number of prison releases in error has doubled under this Labour government – from 115 in 2023/24 to 262 in 2024/25. The number of violent and sex offenders mistakenly released has reportedly increased eight-fold. And as much as ministers may wish it to be so, the scale of these increases make this something which cannot be lumped onto their opposite numbers: prison officers and governors know that the instinct of their political masters is now to get inmates out of prison rather than keep them in.
We should not forget that Lord Timpson, in February last year prior to his ministerial appointment, gave an interview to Channel 4 News where he stated that we are ‘addicted to punishment’ and ‘so many of the people that are in prison shouldn’t be there‘.
Some wags might suggest that mistakenly releasing sex offenders onto the streets is perhaps not the way to achieve this policy objective. But it is through the various early release schemes introduced by this government, that their urge to reduce the number of criminals in prison has been translated into operational practice. Certainly, if ministers say they want fewer people to go to prison, those running the Prison Service on the ground will take this as a powerful signal for how the institutions should be run.
As a former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Prison Reform Trust, Timpson is a long-time member of what I have termed the ‘Prison Reform Industrial Complex’ – the small group of charities and individuals who operate in and around prisons. This group’s influence on prisons and sentencing policy is considerable. When Timpson made his maiden speech in the House of Lords last year, a stream of peers combined their congratulations with declaring an interest in one prison related charity after another. The near uniformity of opinion expressed was that there should be fewer criminals in our prisons.
The presence of Timpson – a man who undoubtedly cares deeply about the state of our prisons – in government is reflective of a wider issue. We are often told that what is required is the presence of those from business or other forms of non-party political experience to knock the system into shape – from Gordon Brown’s government of All the Talents (or GOATs), to the contemporary plans of Reform UK. But the reality is that these efforts are rarely a success, particularly when it concerns bringing in specialists already in hock to a sector’s activists and stakeholders – which given his locus standi in the prison reform sector – many would consider Timpson to, at least partly, be.
Ultimately, governing is far harder than it may appear from the comfort of the executive suite or the moral superiority of the activist campaign. Protecting the public from the wicked and prolific criminals who immiserate our country requires ministers who are tough political street fighters. They will never be found from the cast of well-meaning ‘progressives’ who have spent their lives focused on mercy for the guilty rather than justice for the innocent.
The Prime Minister needs to accept that what is required in the prisons brief is a hard-bitten, well-scarred political bruiser. One who will fight for restoration of control and order in our prisons – rather than applause from their friends in the do-gooder prison reform lobby.
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