Murder suspects among violent prisoners released due to blunders

48 suspected or convicted criminals held for violent offences were freed by mistake in 2014-15

According to Ministry of Justice data, forty-eight suspected or convicted criminals held for violent offences in England and Wales were freed due to blunders in 2014-15 (Rex)

Prisoners in custody for suspected murder were among many released by mistake in the past year, including a killer who waited for a bus for several hours before being hauled back into custody.

Forty-eight suspected or convicted criminals held for violent offences in England and Wales were freed due to blunders in 2014-15, according to Ministry of Justice data released after a Freedom of Information request.

In the past decade, 505 prisoners were let go in error. The violent offenders included Martynas Kupstys, who was on remand in August last year while awaiting trial for murder when he was let out of HMP Lincoln by mistake. He waited at a nearby bus stop for three hours until he was found by staff who realised the mistake and returned him to custody.Kupstys was later jailed for the murder of Ivans Zdanovics, 24, who died in a house fire in January 2014.

The Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Commons justice committee, called the situation a “shambles”. “The first duty of the Prison Service should be protection of the public,” he said. “These disturbing figures show that once a week the Prison Service releases the wrong prisoner, and has done so for years. This is nothing more than a shambles which puts the public unnecessarily at risk.”

The statistics, obtained by the Press Association, show 41 people were wrongly released from prison and seven from court custody – one fewer than the 49 mistakenly freed the previous year.

HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire had the highest number of erroneous releases, with a total of 10 between 2013 and 2015. There were three from HMP Manchester, one from HMP Belmarsh and one from HMP Woodhill. A prisoner was released from HMP Hewell in Worcestershire in July 2014 after an apparent mix-up involving another inmate with the same surname. He was brought back to prison the next day.

The violent offenders include Martynas Kupstys

Lucy Hastings, director of the charity Victim Support, said victims of crime would be “alarmed and frustrated”. “We know it can be distressing when offenders are released,” she said. “Releases made in error can make this many times worse.”

Labour’s shadow Justice minister Andy Slaughter said: “This is a further sign of the crisis in our prisons.”

A Prison Service spokesman said: “The number of releases in error have fallen by almost a third since 2009 and the vast majority are returned to custody very quickly.”

The Justice Secretary Michael Gove has pledged to tackle overcrowding by cutting the prison population.