00:00Hadouche Kabartou had been living at the Bell Hotel in Essex when he was charged with the sexual assault of
00:06a 14-year-old girl, prompting a series of protests outside the venue over the summer.
00:13Kabartou was later found guilty of five offences, including sexual assault and jailed, and was then mistakenly released from HMP
00:21Kelmsford last October, before he was detained and deported to Ethiopia.
00:25The three-day manhunt to find him cost Essex Police and the Metropolitan Police a combined £152,738, with officers
00:36from both forces also working extra hours to locate the inmate.
00:42This is according to a review by former Met Police Deputy Commissioner Dame Lynne Owens.
00:47At the Met, 1,178 officer and staff hours were used, and two days of searching cost the London force
00:56£72,082.
00:59Dame Lynne called the problem a symptom of a broken system.
01:03Ministry of Justice figures published on Wednesday showed 179 inmates were mistakenly released between April 2025 and March 2026.
01:13That is an average of three prisoners a week.
01:17Justice Secretary David Lammy told ITV News that he did not want to blame the frontline staff for what Dame
01:24Lynne finds is a broken system.
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