The stern appearance of Wandsworth Prison is enough to make adults shudder.
Based in leafy south-west London, the Victorian-era premises, with its gaunt brick walls and dark, forbidding entrance, are one of the largest in the UK.
The interior is just as intimidating. Having visited several years ago, I was struck by the smell of urine from the gutters lining the cell blocks.
I have been inside several prisons during my career but this was by far the worst.
Like many prisons, it suffers from overcrowding and has almost twice as many inmates as it was designed for.
The prison is not known for having strong security. Just a couple of years ago, Daniel Khalife, who was in custody awaiting trial for violating the Official Secrets Act, escaped by tying himself to the bottom of a food delivery truck.
The mistaken release of two prisoners in one week has once again drawn attention to the Category B prison.
One serving prison officer described security as a “joke”.
They told me, “It’s crazy to be there and mistakes are made all the time. There’s a real state of panic after this mistake and I’m wondering if I’ll be able to take on much more of this job when things like this happen and make us look like idiots.”
An independent monitoring board report published last month said a third of staff are absent every day, while a 2024 inspection report said safety remained a major concern.
The prison is known to be one of the worst in the country. He received urgent notice in May 2024 following an unannounced visit from HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor.
An “urgent notification” in prisons is a formal process in which the Chief Inspector alerts the Justice Secretary to important and urgent concerns. Pressing concerns included assaults on staff, overcrowding and staff being unable to account for prisoners’ whereabouts.
In a letter to then-Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Taylor wrote: “Inspectors found significant weaknesses in many aspects of security. The wings were chaotic and staff in most units were unable to confirm where all prisoners were during the working day.”
We know very little at this time about why or how Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a sex offender, was mistakenly released.
The Metropolitan Police was not informed of the error for almost a week and it is not clear why this was the case.
As for a second man, William Smith, the BBC understands his accidental release was due to an administrative error at the court. He has since surrendered.
I heard from insiders that prison staff may not have realized Khaddour-Cherif was missing until a few days after his release.
Sources tell me that HMP Wandsworth governor Andy Davy was not in jail on the day Khaddour-Cherif was mistakenly released.
Ironically, this is because Davy had been tasked with carrying out the investigation into how Hadush Kebatu was accidentally released from Chelmsford Prison in Essex. I understand that the investigation is now complete.
Almost two weeks ago, Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy introduced additional checks following Kebatu’s accidental release to ensure mistakes like this do not happen again.
But these checks are proving to be a “major burden”, according to a senior prison official, who said they have “only increased paperwork”. “Now in some cases it takes a day to complete checks to release someone and this is not helpful when staffing is an issue,” they said.
I understand that the early release scheme introduced last summer after prisons almost reached capacity has also increased pressure on staff and contributed to the rise in accidental releases.
The emergency plan allows some inmates to be released after serving 40% of their fixed sentence, instead of the usual 50%.
“There’s more coming and going now, and that means we have to deal with more checks, more paperwork, more sentencing calculations, and this just means more errors are happening. It’s inevitable,” said one prison official.
More than 200 people have been mistakenly released over the past year, and the government says this is unacceptable. Some staff are excited, saying the prison system has been in crisis for a while, but recent mistakes are the reason politicians are suddenly getting involved.
“How bad does it have to get before they do something?” asked one staff member. “It’s a shit storm.”
