- Deputy Prime Minister unveils action to crack down on
mistaken prison releases
- Courts hotline established to fast-track prison queries and
reduce mistakes
- Up to £10 million over six months to introduce technology and
AI solutions that help frontline staff avoid errors and ensure
accuracy
Immediate action to clamp down on mistaken releases from prisons
and restore public confidence in the criminal justice system has
been announced by the Deputy Prime Minister today (Tuesday 11
November).
Updating the House of Commons, set out the decisive steps
being taken to keep the public safe, including harnessing new
technology to bear down on mistakes.
These new measures will help reverse the rising trend in release
errors, which began under the last government, and keep offenders
who should be in prison locked up.
A £10 million investment will see the roll out of new AI-powered
tools to frontline staff so they can accurately calculate
sentences and vital upgrades to the archaic paper-based systems
accelerated. Currently, already under pressure prison staff are
having to wade through more than 500 pages of guidance, making
mistakes more likely.
The multi-million-pound pledge will be invested over the next six
months and build on new digital crack-teams deployed to prisons
last week to look at how cutting-edge technology can be used to
bring down errors.
Further action includes:
- The Deputy Prime Minister will chair a new monthly Justice
Performance Board to track how prisons and courts are
performing
- Expanding Dame Lynne Owen's independent review with a
dedicated data team to review historic cases and understand
systematic issues
- A fast-track courts hotline so prison staff can quickly check
for outstanding warrants before offenders are released
- Simplifying prisoner release policy to standardise how cases
are treated and consider whether amendments are required to
operational policy.
The Deputy Prime Minister said:
“The first duty of any Government is to keep the public safe. The
rise in releases in error is one symptom of a service under
intolerable strain.
“We are putting in new guardrails around an archaic system, with
tougher new checks, reviewing specific failings and modernising
prison processes and joint working with courts – all to bear down
on the increase in mistakes.
“That is what victims deserve. That is what the public expects,
and this Government will do what it takes to protect the public.”
A new Justice Performance Board will give the Deputy Prime
Minister greater oversight of the system and drive improvements
in prisons and criminal courts, laser-focussed on addressing key
metrics including releases in error. The Board is bringing
together the most senior officials within the Ministry of Justice
and first met yesterday. It will continue to meet every month
until performance improves.
A new urgent hotline staffed by court experts will allow prisons
to quickly escalate queries relating to warrants – with rapid
clarifications helping to reduce the risk of errors. Court staff
must also now confirm orders verbally with judges before
finalising them, and any late requests for changes must be sent
directly to the relevant prison.
The measures include a relentless focus on data, with a new team
of data scientists deployed to review all historic releases in
error to understand what went wrong in every case.
This work will support the independent review, led by Dame Lynne
Owens, launched last month into release errors across the prison
estate which will be expanded to consider how accuracy and the
transparency around mistaken release data can be improved. This
review is expected to report back in February 2026.
It comes as new figures published today, ordered by the Deputy
Prime Minister, revealed there have been 91 releases in error
from April 2025 to October 2025.
Release errors have been rising for many years and are
symptomatic of the prison system crisis this Government
inherited, with jails dangerously full and close to collapse.
Since coming into office, the government has taken decisive
action to end the prison crisis, stabilising the immediate chaos
inherited and rescuing the system before being able to make the
long-term change needed.
An extra 14,000 prison places will be built by this government,
while sentences will be overhauled to make sure we have enough
prison places to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public
safe. The Government has already delivered 2,500 new places in
just over a year, as part of the biggest prison expansion
programme since the Victorian era. The last Government added only
500 places to the prison estate in the previous 14 years.
