Sonnex Remembered

A number of commentators have mentioned how TR, and in particular the split between the CRCs and NPS, is very likely to lead to SFO's. It seems appropriate to revisit the infamous 'Sonnex' case from 2008, not least because Paul Wilson is now interim HM Chief Inspector of Probation and all the elements for a repetition appear to be present in spades.

******  
Previous SFO enquiries have highlighted issues with poor communication, information not being passed on to relevant staff, ridiculously high caseloads and unrealistic expectations of newly qualified staff. TR sticks two fingers up at those painstaking findings, at future potential victims, and the staff left trying to make sense of wave after wave of poor quality IT, lengthy new bureaucratic procedures, inadequate staffing all being driven, reconfigured and mobilised by the biggest load of pretend corporate bullshit bollocks ever, wasting time and delaying access to the information that matters.

******
Just catching up on the blog from the last few days. Important to remember with Sonnex that a lack of information sharing contributed to the SFO. Scary given the lack of information sharing now between CRCs and NPS: 

In 2008 Danno Sonnex was released on licence as part of an 8 year sentence for violence and robbery. The Youth Offending Institute did not share a report that highlighted that Dano Sonnex had the potential to kill: The medical report completed at the Youth Offending Institute did not transfer to the central file. 

A meeting between probation, police and prison to clarify confusion over risk level was arranged but did not take place: The multi-agency meeting did not go ahead because relevant documents could not be printed out. When charged and remanded for handling stolen goods it took 33 days instead of 5 to issue a recall warrant: The recall was delayed because probation required more detailed information from the police about the nature of the charges. 

When presented from remand prison to Court, Magistrates granted Sonnex technical bail. He was released from Court on 16th May 2008 and absconded: Magistrates provided technical bail because they believed that the licence had been revoked which would have meant a return to custody from court. 

Probation were not made aware that bail had been granted and Sonnex had been released: Probation took a further 4 weeks to formally revoke the licence. Police delayed execution of the warrant while they gathered information about whether a firearms team was required: Police were then delayed in executing the warrant.

On 29th June 2008 Dano Sonnex tortured and murdered two French students living in London. Each agency only had a partial view of the case and better information sharing could have given all of the agencies a whole view, providing an opportunity for better risk management.

*******
If Mr. Wilson (and I'm not being critical of him), really believes and stands by the 'errors' he identified in the Sonnex case, then surely a quick glance around and he has to say the current situation in probation must indicate that another 'disaster' of similar magnitude is possible at any moment, and TR is proving dangerous!

"It emerged Sonnex was supervised by a probation officer in Lewisham with just nine months experience and who was responsible for 127 case files at the time. The new acting chief probation officer for London, Paul Wilson, said the case was a "wake up call" for London probation but that frontline staff should not be blamed.It also emerged the probation watchdog was aware of problems in services in London as early as March last year - three months before the murders. An inspection of London Probation Service found there were "fundamental problems with the timely completion of basic tasks to a high standard" adding that a third of risk assessments were not completed on time.

It is the second serious failure by the capital's probation service which faced a scathing attach by watchdogs and ministers following the murder of city financier John Monckton in 2004 by two offenders under its supervision.In 2008, the female probation officer who took on Sonnex had only been qualified for nine months and joined the Lewisham team at a time of staff shortages so immediately inherited the workload of a sick colleague as well as her own cases. It meant she could see Sonnex for no more than 20 minutes a week. Two senior officers in the area were also doing the work of five. Since the scandal some 60 additional staff have already been employed across London and another 80 are to be recruited. Mr Wilson accepted that "serious errors were made by London Probation", including management failings, central resource allocation and workload pressures. But he added: "It comes down every time to a young offender manager overwhelmed by an unfair workload and not experienced enough to grasp the risk posed by Sonnex."

This from the Guardian:- 

The disclosure that Dano Sonnex was out on a parole licence after serving an eight-year sentence for violence and robbery at the time he committed the murders is a devastating blow to the London Probation Service.

It comes just three years after an official inquiry report into the murder of the Chelsea financier, John Monckton, found that there had been a "collective failure" and numerous blunders by probation and parole staff.

The internal Probation Service reviews into the Sonnex case led to the resignation of David Scott, the chief probation officer for London, at the end of February, after allegedly being told by the justice secretary, Jack Straw, that he did not want a repeat of the Haringey social services fiascos.

The official inquiry reports released today [after the verdicts] provide a damning catalogue of serious errors and management failings by the London Probation Service. They confirm that Lewisham probation – the office at the centre of the case – was severely unstaffed, with the supervision of Sonnex left to an inexperienced probation officer with a caseload of 127 other offenders.

At the time of Sonnex's release, Lewisham probation office appears to have been in meltdown. The officer who was supervising him had a caseload of 127 offenders and had only been qualified for nine months, although she was an experienced probation assistant. She was seeing 12 to 15 people a day. Her senior probation officer was "acting up". She was just one of 22 probation officers in Lewisham, only one of whom had more than two years experience. 

According to Napo, the probation union, it appears to have been management by crisis in Lewisham, with high sickness levels averaging 27 days a year and with no proper risk assessments on 650 of the 2,500 offenders they were responsible for. "This was an office under pressure with a very high caseload," says the official verdict. Because Sonnex arrived for his probation appointments on time or even early, and was polite, co-operative and smartly dressed, he may not have seemed a priority case.

Details of the key failings in the case include:

• Prison doctor's report that Sonnex was a potential killer was not shared: In May 2004, a doctor at Portland young offenders' institution reported that Sonnex had said he "feared that his reaction to events meant he could kill". But this was not shared with prison staff.

• Confusion over his dangerousness: Sonnex was deemed a tier three or medium-risk offender when he should have been tier four or high-risk offender. There was confusion over this, with Sonnex listed high-risk on one probation and prison database, but medium on another. The prison service saw him as a drug-free, much-improved inmate, but the probation union claims that there was pressure to "tier-down" offenders. A key multi-agency meeting with probation, prison and police staff which would have clarified his statement was scheduled but never took place because staff could not print out the documents they needed for it.

• No recall after an attack on a five-months' pregnant woman and her boyfriend two days after his release in February: The police did not charge Sonnex because the two victims feared repercussions and despite repeated police visits were not willing to make witness statements. The probation office heard about the incident from social services and from Sonnex as an unsubstantiated allegation. Sonnex claimed he had left the flat when an argument started. He was given only a verbal warning.

• It took 33 days, instead of five, to issue the warrant to recall Sonnex to prison: His probation officer started the process when he was charged with handling stolen goods and remanded in custody on 3 May but there was a delay in signing off the papers as managers sought more detail on the seriousness of the charges. Lewisham was already the "top recaller" in London at time at time of prison overcrowding crisis.

• There was also confusion between Greenwich magistrates court and Lewisham probation office which resulted in Sonnex being granted bail despite the recall application. Court officials appear to have assumed he was already on remand on another charge, and granted him technical bail. The effect was that the licence was not revoked until 16 days before the murders. He disappeared as soon as he was bailed on 16 May.

• Police failed to act on the recall warrant for 16 days until after the murders had happened: The Independent Police Complaints Commission say "grave errors" were made by the police who failed to deal with it as a matter of urgency. At one point the arrest was delayed as police debated whether a firearms team should be sent to arrest him. Emergency recalls are supposed to happen within 24 hours. One police sergeant has received a disciplinary warning as a result.

PS Comment by Frances Crook, Howard League via twitter:- 

"the ignored failure of Sonnex was he'd been held in virtual solitary for 8 years since he was 17, yet prison not blamed"