L

Lord Timpson (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 10 November 2025

Debate

Accidental Prison Releases

Contribution

I thank my noble friend. The checklists that we have made more robust are the same checklists across all prisons, but the number of releases per prison varies dramatically. HMP Gartree averages two releases a year, whereas, as I previously said, in Wandsworth it is 2,000. That is why the digital team last week went into HMP Wandsworth, to look at opportunities for some quick fixes to embrace digital technology. The AI team went in and, to give a couple of examples, they thought that an AI chatbot would be really helpful, along with a cross-referencing for aliases, because we know some offenders have more than 20 aliases. We have given the team the green light to get on with examples like that. The noble Lord is exactly right that this is about how we deal with this information, and how we make sure it is accurate when we are dealing with often very complex people in a very complex situation.

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