How was killer allowed to walk free?

He walked out of an open prison the best part of a decade ago, where he was meant to be serving a sentence for murdering a teenager and writing 'Hell's Angels' on the wall with his blood.

Were it not enough that he then lived in Wolverhampton as a free man, he even managed to claim thousands of pounds in benefits and travel to Ireland on holiday.

Despite numerous opportunities for the authorities to have found him simply by running his name through their various databases, it fell to a member of the public to tip off the police that he was walking among ordinary, decent people.

This story should shock everyone who believes in a system of justice, law and order.

Sadly it comes as no surprise at all.

Incompetence and a lack of joined up thinking are now considered par for the course when dealing with the various departments of the UK Government.

We live in an age where privacy campaigners are constantly raising the alarm over the amount of information about us stored in databases and on computers.

The reality, however, is that different arms of the Government continue to work completely independently of one another.

The Department for Work and Pensions should have been able to see when Richards was said to have been claiming disability benefits that there was a black mark against his name.

The police should have had him on a list of wanted criminals as soon as he was discovered missing from prison.

Those who suffer are the parents of Richards' victim, Michael Groves, and his own parents, who had come to believe that the lack of police attention meant the authorities no longer saw him as having a debt to pay.

There are also questions to be asked of the authorities running our prisons as to how many others may have just slipped quietly through the net.

David Richards may not have harmed anyone else during his years as a free man, but what about other criminals that have walked free?

With the technology at their disposal, the instant communication and the banks of CCTV cameras filming each person on the street hundreds of times a day, this sorry case proves one thing.

It is easy for criminals to hide in plain sight.