'They're wild animals, all they want to do is fight. We can't cope': The brutal gang nightmare that has engulfed HMP Wandsworth - as insiders reveal the appalling truth behind spate of accidental inmate releases
There can be few more forbidding prisons in the country than HMP Wandsworth.
The Victorian jail, with its double-fronted wooden entrance beneath a gothic arch, is flanked by twin three-storey towers. Surrounding the entire fortress-like complex are 30ft walls, with some sections topped with razor-sharp barbed wire and metal fencing.
HMP Wandsworth would not, metaphorically speaking, look out of place in Gotham City.
Back in the Sixties, Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs escaped from here but only following an elaborate breakout which involved scaling the perimeter with a rope ladder, lowering himself into a waiting van through a hole cut in the roof of the vehicle and knocking out nearby telephones to prevent anyone from alerting the police.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it was once very hard indeed to get out of Wandsworth once the doors had slammed shut behind you. Not today, though, as the latest scandal engulfing the Prison Service and, by implication, the Government illustrates in circumstances bordering on the farcical.
Two prisoners, including Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24 – who no one was even aware was missing for six days and who was arrested in north London yesterday – were mistakenly released from Wandsworth in the space of little over a week.
They were simply allowed to walk out of the front gates, something we now know is far from uncommon in prisons up and down the country.
Wandsworth – where a ‘bankrupt’ Boris Becker spent eight months in 2022 for hiding £2.5 million worth of assets and loans from his creditors – epitomises Britain’s broken penal system.
Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was arrested yesterday after his accidental release
Fraudster William 'Billy' Smith handed himself in after another bungled release at one of Britain's most famous prisons
The Victorian jail, with its double-fronted wooden entrance beneath a gothic arch, is flanked by twin three-storey towers. Surrounding the entire fortress-like complex are 30ft walls, with some sections topped with razor-sharp barbed wire and metal fencing
Its failings have resulted in 262 prisoners in England and Wales being accidentally freed in the 12 months to March this year – a 128 per cent increase from the 115 the previous year.
But why does it keep happening?
According to a prison source speaking exclusively to the Mail, the jail in south-west London, one of the biggest in Britain, is overcrowded and understaffed. This has created a ‘chaotic’ environment with inexperienced or untrained staff often signing off vital paperwork.
‘There are staff who have only been in the job for six months making these crucial calls,’ the source told us.
A clerical error at this stage of the release process can lead to dangerous individuals being let out prematurely – as seems to have happened in the case of Kaddour-Cherif.
Few past or present staff at Wandsworth – some of whom have spoken to the Mail – will be surprised at the turn of events.
The failings at the prison have already been exposed in scandalous detail in a string of damning official reports in the past year: CCTV cameras that didn’t work and warders unable to account for their prisoners – described as ‘just unfathomable’ by the chief inspector of prisons.
The release of Kaddour-Cherif on October 29 may yet prove to be career-threatening for the new Justice Secretary and Deputy PM, David Lammy. He had told Parliament on October 27 that he’d introduced the ‘strongest release checks that have ever been in place’ to avoid a repeat of the Hadush Kebatu debacle – the Ethiopian migrant sex offender mistakenly freed from Chelmsford prison on October 24 – which, he said, were ‘effective immediately’.
The release of Kaddour-Cherif on October 29 may yet prove to be career-threatening for the new Justice Secretary and Deputy PM, David Lammy
Daniel Khalife escaped from Wandsworth in September 2023 by strapping himself to the underside of a food delivery van
Two days later (last Wednesday) there was indeed a ‘repeat’ but his story had changed.
Lammy said Kaddour-Cherif, who was serving time for trespass with intent to steal but had previously been prosecuted for indecent exposure, was released before, not after, the additional checks he had ordered came into force.
So, which of the answers he gave at the despatch box is correct?
His belligerence in initially refusing to say if another migrant had been released by mistake when standing in for Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions, and sending out a junior minister to try to clear up the mess on Thursday, led to accusations of incompetence and cowardice, even from some members of his own party.
It would be unfair to scapegoat beleaguered staff at Wandsworth for everything that has happened there. Originally built to house fewer than 100 prisoners, the jail population has swelled to more than 1,500 at times and is never less than chronically congested with severely depleted staffing levels.
Every day, an average of one third of staff are unavailable, revealed the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) this month.
More alarmingly, IMB visitors, the ‘eyes and ears’ of the public appointed by ministers, were ‘unable to conduct roll checks because staff could not provide accurate prisoner numbers’.
The revelations mirrored the findings of an earlier report by the chief inspector of prisons: that staff across most units were unable to account for the whereabouts of inmates during the working day.
Is it any wonder then that Iranian spy Daniel Khalife, a former soldier, was able to escape by clinging to the underside of a food delivery truck in September 2023, in a scene reminiscent of a comedy crime caper?
The best that can be said of the episode is that at least he wasn’t let out by staff, who were supposed to be keeping him locked up, like Kaddour-Cherif and William ‘Billy’ Smith, who was released this week on the same day he was starting a 45-month sentence for a series of frauds. He has now turned himself in.
On the day he disappeared, nearly 40 per cent of prison officers had not turned up for their shift, with long hours, violence among prisoners and poor pay causing staff burnout, according to the Prison Officers’ Association.
Wandsworth was placed in special measures in the wake of that farce, one of just ten jails out of more than 100 in England and Wales to suffer such a fate since 2022. A former prison officer with connections to the jail painted a nightmarish picture of life inside and the impact it is having on his old colleagues, and hence security.
‘Staff are worn out,’ he said. ‘There is a massive gang problem because so many London gang members are in there. Violence is endemic. It’s so overcrowded and so many prisoners need to be kept away from the others that there is a 23-hour lock-up for most of them.
‘Keeping people who are already unstable criminals in a prison cell for 23 hours a day turns them into wild animals. So, when you let them out all they want to do is fight and cause chaos.
‘This means staff are constantly in a state of heightened panic, they get stressed and sloppy, and mistakes are made.’
Having the right people with the necessary experience is especially important in the Offender Management Unit (OMU), the office inside each jail which makes decisions when prisoners are due for release.
Both Kaddour-Cherif and Smith would have been processed by the OMU at Wandsworth.
‘The unit is made up of admin staff – so not normal operational prison officers – who deal with the paperwork over from the courts and probation service,’ our source explained.
‘What should happen on the day is that one of the OMU team rings up the caseworker to see if the prisoner has any outstanding charges, or if there is any other reason why they shouldn’t be released, such as having to serve another sentence. Sometimes these checks just aren’t done properly or there is a simple miscommunication.
‘What can also lead to a wrongful release is someone gets confused between a prison transfer and release. The paperwork for when a prisoner gets moved to another jail looks almost identical to the release papers.
‘Wandsworth is a large London prison so they might have 25 to 30 releases or transfers every day. The turnover is so high, staff will be so stretched that inevitably there will be mistakes, not double-checking the paperwork – just incompetence.
‘But it’s the fault of the system and the bosses who put so much responsibility on people who are overworked and ill-equipped.’
A second source went further: ‘There are so many people and departments involved and boxes to tick that no one knows what they have, what they need to do or what they don’t have.
‘It’s like going back in time. They still use fax machines to send documents around.’
The latest progress review of HMP Wandsworth by chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor spoke of ‘a revived sense of purpose at the jail’ and ‘limited and fragile’ improvements having been made.
But staffing remained a problem, with an average of a third of staff still absent every day.
The most worrying statistic of all, though, is worth repeating: That 262 prisoners in England and Wales were mistakenly released in the 12 months to March this year, up from 115 the previous year – the fourth consecutive year of increases.
Will it be any different next year?
Additional reporting: Tim Stewart
