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The prison officers’ union has questioned why a single member of staff at HMP Chelmsford has been “unjustly” targeted after the mistaken release of a refused asylum seeker who had sexually assaulted a teenage girl.
Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the POA, said that the member, a discharging manager, was the only person under suspension when at least two other more senior staff members were involved in freeing Hadush Kebatu.
The Ethiopian national was let go and ushered away by staff from HMP Chelmsford on Friday morning instead of being sent to an immigration detention centre.
Kebatu, who had been living at the Bell hotel in Epping, Essex when he sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, travelled to London after his release and was arrested on Sunday morning in Finsbury Park after a two-day manhunt.
His case led to protests and counter-protests on the streets in Epping, where he had been living in asylum accommodation, and eventually outside hotels housing asylum seekers across the country.
His mistaken release has uncovered chaos within the Prison Service in England and Wales, with the prisons watchdog warning on Monday that it would be “very easy to throw an individual at Chelmsford under the bus for this” when it was a systemic problem.
Fairhurst said: “One of our members has been unjustly suspended because he is not the only one involved in this entire process. Our thoughts are with him and we will fully support him.”
The member of staff who has been suspended is a custodial manager on reception who is responsible for going through the paperwork to ensure that the right prisoner is being released under the right conditions. However, the manager was checking paperwork that was processed by other more senior staff.
Fourteen days before someone’s release, a hub manager in the offender unit checks the paperwork to make sure that the right offender is being let out under the right conditions.
Two days before each prisoner’s release, a governor-grade manager then checks the paperwork, the licence and the warrant to ensure that the right person is being let go.
It is understood that the investigation will centre on whether Kebatu’s status as a prisoner being prepared for deportation was on the paperwork or was missed by someone responsible for carrying out checks.
Mistakes in the release of prisoners are happening “all the time” and are symptomatic of the chaos within the system, the chief inspector of prisons has warned. Charlie Taylor said prisoners being released early, in error or even late was an “endemic problem” that needed to be fixed by Prison Service leaders.
“This is a case that has hit the news because it’s an incredibly high-profile prisoner convicted of a very serious offence,” said Taylor. “But the worry is that, below the radar, this stuff has been going on a lot recently and I’m really worried about it.”
He described the case as “enormously concerning”, adding: “But I think it’s symptomatic of the chaos that we’re seeing within the system, where the number of prisoners who were released early has gone up.”
He said “serious mistakes” had been made at HMP Chelmsford, which was a “very busy” reception prison, while an inspection at HMP Pentonville and unpublished findings at HMP Birmingham showed “serious anomalies” of sentence calculations going on there, too.
“I suspect this is common to many of these sorts of very busy Victorian reception prisons who were just under a huge amount of strain,” the chief prisons inspector said.
“I think it’s very easy to throw an individual at Chelmsford under the bus for this, but this is a systemic problem and the Prison Service needs to take some responsibility as well for failing to fix this issue, which has got much, much worse in the last couple of years.”
According to government figures published in July, 262 prisoners were released in error in the year to March 2025: a 128% increase on 115 in the previous 12 months.
David Lammy, the justice secretary, will set out a series of measures aimed at strengthening the system later on Monday, while prisons are expected to begin enhanced checks before inmates are released.
The Ministry of Justice has been approached for comment.
