- Hard Labour - 6th November 2025
- Behind the headlines… - 4th November 2025
- A dim view - 4th November 2025
As pressure mounts on the UK Labour Government over the release of prisoners wrongly, attention has shifted to problems of the justice system in Wales, with one expert declaring that it is “terrible”.
After a migrant sex offender was mistakenly released from prison, Justice Secretary David Lammy announced that he was implementing the “strongest release checks that have ever been in place”.
However, since then, details have emerged of two more prisoners being wrongly let out.
Mr Lammy (who is also the Deputy Prime Minister) has said he is “absolutely outraged” over the release in error of Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, a sex offender.
Mr Lammy has added that his officials have been “working through the night to take him back to prison”, but this is unlikely to satisfy critics.
It is clear that the whole justice system is creaking, and Wales is no exception.
One prisons expert who is close to justice authorities across Wales told The Eye: “The situation is terrible. Our courts have an enormous backlog, prisons are overcrowded, and we are reeling from scandal after scandal”.
This shocking assessment appears to be underlined by recent events, with last Autumn the release of a damning report which exposed what is happening.
It was stressed that: “urgent Action is needed to address these serious and growing issues. Any decision to ignore or overlook the problems or distinct policy context in Wales is no longer sustainable or defensible”.
HMP Parc has recently faced increased scrutiny following an inspection report which raised concerns over safety, and 17 inmate deaths were reported in 2024, many linked to drug-related causes.
Earlier this year another hard-hitting report emphasised the scale of the problem generally.
The document by the Institute for Government proclaimed: “The prison system in England and Wales is in an extremely poor state. Levels of violence, self-harm and drug use are shockingly high, prisoners’ work and education opportunities severely limited. Buildings are crumbling or in severe disrepair, many dangerously so, and physical conditions often unsanitary. Inexperienced staff are struggling to cope with these increasingly fraught circumstances.
“The failure of successive governments since at least the early 2000s to expand the number of places to meet the growing number of prisoners has put severe pressure on capacity and exacerbated this decline. Deep funding cuts implemented in the early 2010s have still not been fully reversed, even as the prison population has hit new highs…
“Cuts to prison officer numbers as part of the coalition government’s austerity programme began to bite from 2012/13, with officer numbers in 2013/14 down 26% from 2009/10 (and stayed at low levels) even as the prison population rose..”.
The problem of prisons being ‘overcrowded’, won’t have been eased much by releasing inmates by mistake.
These issues only highlight a crisis for the justice system everywhere, and Wales could be among the worst areas in the UK…
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