British prisons keep releasing people by accident, but that's only part of the problem

LONDON — It’s been a strange sort of prison break: no daring escapes, no Hollywood getaways — just inmates quietly released, by mistake, onto the streets of Britain

LONDON — It’s been a strange sort of prison break: no daring escapes, no Hollywood getaways — just inmates quietly released, by mistake, onto the streets of Britain.

What once might have been an isolated blunder comes at an unwelcome time in a country strained by rising prices, stagnant wages and crumbling public services.

One man, an Algerian sex offender, was arrested in London on Friday after being freed in error nine days earlier; another, a British national and convicted fraudster, accidentally released from the same prison shortly afterward and turned himself in on Thursday.

Their cases followed the mistaken release of a convicted sex offender from a separate prison in October, which sparked a three-day manhunt before he was rearrested.

At least four prisoners released in error over the past year remain at large, the BBC reports. More than 260 were wrongly released in England and Wales in the year to March, official data shows — more than double the figure the year before.