Relieve Jails = Overload Probation

I notice that the 'i' newspaper has picked up on the impending disaster for a probation service already broken. This from yesterday:-

‘Nobody’s safe’: Plan to relieve jails ‘will overload broken probation service’

Police, relatives of murder victim, and probation union say sentencing changes will place extra pressure on already 'struggling' service

Fears are being raised that a struggling, “broken” probation service will be unable to protect the public under plans to keep some criminals out of prison that will add thousands to its caseload. The Government wants to tackle prison overcrowding by instructing courts to deal with many offenders, who would currently go to prison, in the community instead. But the prospect of the probation service having to deal with a flood of extra cases has alarmed those who have already suffered from its shortcomings and led to warnings from the police and probation officers’ trade union Napo.

“We are not safe, you shouldn’t feel safe,” said Farah Naz the aunt of Zara Aleena who was murdered last year by a violent criminal who had been released from prison just nine days earlier. If this is what the government is doing to probation services, if this is what it’s landing on their shoulders, nobody is safe.”

The 35-year-old law graduate’s killer should have been arrested days before for breaking his licence conditions, and had been wrongly graded as only a “medium” risk of further harm. The killing in June 2022 was one of a series of recent cases where investigations have found dangerous blunders by probation services.

“If probation couldn’t keep up then, they certainly aren’t going to be able to keep up now,” Ms Naz told i. “How many dead bodies do they want?”

There are currently around 500 reports each year of people under probation supervision committing serious violent or sexual offences, including murders and rapes. Justice secretary Alex Chalk announced an early release programme in October to free up jail cells, which has caused concern over its application to violent offenders and domestic abusers.

A new Sentencing Bill, currently being considered by Parliament would further increase the pressure by raising the number of inmates released under a “home detention curfew” and forcing courts to “suspend” most prison sentences of under a year and subject offenders to “community orders” instead.

The Ministry of Justice says the change would add between 1,700 and 6,800 people to the probation caseload and require more monitoring and more rehabilitation programmes. But the Government has no plans to increase the probation service’s capacity to handle the new laws.

Tania Bassett, national official for the probation trade union Napo, said the service was already “broken”. She called the new laws a “recipe for disaster” because of the “phenomenal increase of demand into a workforce that can’t cope with the work it’s got already”.

Latest Government figures show that the probation service currently only has 68 per cent of the 6,780 officers needed for its “required staffing level”. It’s more than 2,129 officers short and saw saw more than 1,200 people quit in the last year.

“There’s been no thought to the capacity of probation to accommodate these changes” Ms Bassett told i. “We’ve been losing people as quickly as we’ve been recruiting them, and it means you’ve got a very inexperienced workforce dealing with a lot of complex cases.”

She said that the litany of errors in previous cases – like the killing of Zara Aleena and the four murders committed in Killamarsh, Sheffield, in 2021 by Damien Bendall, deemed by probation to be a “low risk” to his eventual victims – were not one-offs. Increasing caseloads worsened the quality of risk assessments and the “robust engagement” needed with offenders to properly supervise them, Ms Bassett added. “No one will pay attention until it’s gone horribly wrong,” she said. “It’s almost if no one is dead – nobody’s looking at it.”

Chief Constable Rob Nixon, who leads on criminal justice for the National Police Chiefs’ Council told i that the entire system was already “under strain”, with “too much demand and not enough capacity”. He said he expected police workload to increase as a result of upcoming changes because more released prisoners may commit further offences or break conditions requiring them to be tracked down and jailed.

“Where people are on a suspended sentence or they’re on licence conditions and they’re not complying, naturally policing will have to take a role in that but the bulk of the demand, I suspect, will fall on the probation service,” he said. Mr Nixon warned that offenders “need to be really effectively managed within the community”, and that the task requires probation not just to enforce their sentence but to “deal with any associated issues like housing and drug abuse”.

Another measure in the new Sentencing Bill aims to make rapists and other serious sexual offences serve their full sentences in prison rather than become eligible for release at the two-thirds point. It means some may have a licence period of just a year where they are supervised on probation. Ms Bassett warned that was not long enough to carry out accredited psychological programmes currently used to reduce the risk they pose. “If someone needs to do a community sex offender programme they won’t have time,” she said. “They would have to do everything inside but not all prisons provide it. They are less likely to receive meaningful rehabilitation in the community.”

In its most recent annual report published in September the HM Inspectorate of Probation said that two years after the Government reversed the disastrous part-privatisation of the service it was still “struggling” with chronic staffing shortages and “unmanageable workloads”. 

“My main concern is public protection, which has been a consistently weak area,” said the outgoing Chief Inspector of Probation, Justin Russell. “Probation officers have too many cases and too little time to focus on this key area of their work, putting the public potentially at risk.”

The watchdog also warned of the “ever-growing number of days when staff are absent because of sickness”, more than half of which are the result of mental-health issues linked to workplace stress.

Several MPs raised concerns about the Government’s plan during a debate on the Sentencing Bill on Wednesday, which saw the House of Commons vote the law through for scrutiny in the House of Lords. In response to a question on pressure on the probation service, Mr Chalk did not announce any measures to increase capacity, but said: “I am speaking to them directly about the workload that they face and how they can target it to protect the public most effectively.”

Labour’s shadow Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said the Government was “failing to keep the probation service properly staffed, and these shortfalls could have dangerous consequences”. "The government’s strategy appears to be to take the pressure off the prison service, only to transfer it to the probation service instead,” she added. “The government has provided no new funding, no new resources and no action plan to deal with the significant additional workload for the probation service. That is not credible, not reasonable and not safe.”

Several Conservatives also called for action, with South Dorset MP Richard Drax saying he was “very concerned” about pressure on probation and Aylesbury MP Rob Butler adding; “It will be necessary to ensure that the probation service is properly resourced to support additional offenders.” Sentencing minister Gareth Bacon admitted demand would increase but said the Government was “committed to ensuring that probation has the resource it needs to meet demand”.

Chief executive of Justice charity Nacro, Campbell Robb, said: “In order to see less crime and fewer victims, ending ineffective short prison sentences is the right thing to do. “But key to the success of ending short sentences is a properly resourced probation service to provide the supervision, monitoring and support needed for people serving their sentence in the community. This is where the government’s focus must now be.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Our hard-working probation officers do incredibly important work in protecting the public and helping offenders turn their backs on crime. “That is why alongside our long-term reforms to prisons to keep the public safe – including keeping rapists and the most dangerous criminals locked up for longer – we are also investing £155m extra a year in the Probation Service to bolster the frontline and reduce workloads.”

The Probation Service was approached for comment.