Professor John Robertson OBA

Labour’s Lisa Nandy, speaking for Home Secretary, David Lammy I guess, this morning to agree that it’s unacceptable that there are currently 22 prisoners in England, released in error and ‘out there.’

Are there any reports of prisoners released in error in Scotland who have yet returned to prison?

No absconding cases identified: Despite the volume of errors, all available reports from November 2025 explicitly state or imply that affected prisoners were successfully returned to custody through police cooperation. No sources mention ongoing manhunts, fugitives, or prisoners who “have yet returned” (i.e., remain at large). The SPS’s transparency protocol suggests quick resolutions, and opposition critics (e.g., Scottish Conservatives) have focused on the errors themselves rather than failures to recapture.¹

This contrasts with high-profile cases in England and Wales, where 262 erroneous releases occurred in the year to March 2025, including at least four prisoners still unaccounted for as of November 7, 2025 (e.g., Algerian national Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, who absconded after release from HMP Wandsworth).²

Scottish coverage often references these English incidents for context but reports no parallel issues north of the border.³, ⁴

Sources:

1. https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/snp-humiliated-dozens-prisoners-mistakenly-36201344
2. https://news.sky.com/story/how-many-prisoners-are-released-by-mistake-here-are-the-stats-as-search-for-migrant-sex-offender-continues-13457029
3. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/dozens-prisoners-mistakenly-released-jails-36200782
4. https://x.com/i/grok?conversation=1987070656773488859

Have there been prisoner releases in error in Scotland?

Yes, but…

According to the Herald yesterday, there were 9 releases in error of prisoners in Scotland, with 3 more in 2025 so far._¹ The Herald, of course, has added up the figures, 8, 7 and 9 over the last 3 year to make a worryingly, for them, flat trend.

All things being equal, pro rata, you’d expect the figure for England and Wales to be 11 times higher, 99 but, in the same period, it was 262, nearly THREE times more common and increasing by 128% from 115 the previous year.

Sources:

https://news.sky.com/story/how-many-prisoners-are-released-by-mistake-here-are-the-stats-as-search-for-migrant-sex-offender-continues-13457029

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25601298.27-prisoners-mistakenly-released-scotland-since-2022/

Why this difference? This?

Prison assaults were pro rata more than TWICE as common in England & Wales than in Scotland

Click on this for the details:

Prison activity time – Lib Dumbs cannot count as trend is upward but assaults remain at half the level of England & Wales

Finally and perhaps most important, the prisoner-to-prison officer ratio in England, is approximately 3.7:1 as of mid-2025:

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/performance-tracker-2023/prisons

In Scotland, it’s 1.7:1, thus more than twice as well-staffed:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7rv9yx0x9o

Click to access SPS_Annual_Report_and_Accounts_2024-25.pdf