Escaped prisoner numbers 'unknown'
Critics say too many convicts are being held in open prisons
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Saturday, 06, Jan 2007 08:16
The head of the prison service, Phil Wheatley, has said he does not know how many inmates are missing from Britain's open prisons.
Mr Wheatley's admission came after the BBC submitted a freedom of information request to the Home Office about the issue.
After the Home Office told the BBC that 401 prison inmates had absconded in the year to April last year, the prison service director-general said he could not verify the Home Office's claim.
He said he was "embarrassed" by the figures for category D prisons but pointed out that in the "vast majority" of cases the escaped prisoner was quickly arrested.
His revelations come as an embarrassment to the Home Office, which faced a similar lack of information last year over the deportation of foreign prisoners held in Britain's jails.
Today's developments follow the release yesterday of photographs of two escaped murderers who absconded from Sudbury Open Prison in Derbyshire in October and November of last year.