The Irish national broadcaster RTE has this story on their website this morning…

The wrong prisoner was let out of one of Ireland’s main prisons yesterday because he had the same name as another prisoner who was due for release.  It seems that there were two Mark Kennys in the prison, one serving a short sentence for a minor offence, the other serving a longer sentence for a serious offence.

For the sake of clarity and a bad pun I’ll refer to the Kenny with the minor sentence as “Mark 1” and the other as (inevitably) “Mark 2”.

“Mark 1” had been granted temporary release. “Mark 2” was the prisoner released. Nobody noticed for 20 minutes. One can only assume that the error was identified by “Mark 1” enquiring when he was going to be let out.

This is a case of a process failure triggered by poor quality management of information which resulted in a serious criminal being released in error who will now have to be tracked down and re-arrested by police (the Gardaí as they are called in Ireland).

An investigation into how this came to happen has been ordered by the Director of the Irish Prison Service. Which is a bit like locking the stable door after the prisoner has bolted.