500 Prisoners Released In Error

According to report, the Ministry of Justice following a Freedom of Information request released a report by show five-hundred-and-five suspected or co- a rate of just under one every week.

The prison bosses have released more than 500 inmates by mistake over the last decade - including murderers and violent offenders.

One blunder saw murderer Martynas Kupstys let out of HMP Lincoln while on remand in August 2014. He waited at a bus stop near the jail for three hours before he was found and put back behind bars.

Kupstys was later jailed after he was convicted of the murder of Ivans Zdanovics, 24, who died in a house fire in January 2014.

The figures show 41 people were wrongly released from jail and seven from court custody in 2014/15.

That was one fewer than the 49 mistakenly freed in the previous year.

Just under a quarter of all those wrongly freed in the two years were serving sentences or charged with robbery or violent offences including assault and battery.

One inmate was being held on a firearms charge and another was suspected of possessing an explosive substance.

Two of those freed in error in 2014/15 had not been returned to custody as of the end of last month, including an alleged sex offender released from court.

Six of those incorrectly released in the previous year had not been brought back to custody as of September.