Richard Shaw, from Bulwell, Nottingham, went on the run from Sudbury Prison in Derbyshire on 1 June while serving a four-year sentence for burglary.

But the absence of the 39-year-old was not noticed at the jail until Tuesday.

A prison service spokesman said: "It appears there was an error in communicating the details of this absconder to the police."

Escape targets

The prison governor has launched an internal investigation.

The spokesman said: "All of Shaw's other details are correct but, somehow, there was a communication error between Sudbury Prison and the Prison Service press office over his first name."

The confusion arose, they said, when the prisoner was named Joseph Shaw when initially reported missing.

The mistake came to light as a report praising the jail was released by HM Inspectorate of Prisons.

The report states that an average of seven inmates abscond from Sudbury each month, and that this is within the establishment's targets.