Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times a defendant has (a) walked out of and (b) been wrongly released from court (i) before, (ii) during and (iii) after being sentenced to custody.

The breakdown of this data is not available as requested. Data on the number of offenders released in error for 2015/16 is included in the National Offender Management Service Annual Digest, which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/553298/noms-digest-report-2015-2016.pdf. Data for 2016/17 is due to be published this summer.

These incidents are rare and the vast majority are returned to custody very quickly. We thoroughly investigate each one to see what lessons can be learned, as well as working closely with the police to recapture offenders.