The head of the UK’s probation watchdog has warned the service is failing in 97 per cent of areas, even before the government releases thousands of prisoners early.
Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, warned it was already struggling to cope with supervising and managing the number of prisoners currently released on licence.
The government is preparing early release of thousands of inmates who have served as little as 40 per cent of their sentence because of a prison overcrowding crisis in England and Wales.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has warned that the situation in prisons “was worse than we thought” after Labour examined the full extent of the issues once it won the election.
There are concerns that potentially dangerous criminals will be released early in the scheme, putting the onus on the probation service to ensure they are monitored.
But Mr Jones warned that new recruits promised by the new Labour government to help shore up the service will not be ready in time for the early release system’s introduction in the autumn.
On Thursday, the new justice secretary Shabana Mahmood revealed that 5,500 prisoners would be released early across September and October as part of a scheme set to last at least 18 months.
Ms Mahmood pledged to employ an extra 1,000 probation staff to help manage the newly released offenders in the community and said she aims to have the new staff in place by next spring.
However, Mr Jones warned it will take time for new recruits to “bed down” and gain vital experience as they join a service which is already chronically overstretched.
In a new podcast interview, where he also backed calls for prisoners serving abolished indeterminate IPP jail terms to be resentenced, he said: “Clearly, you cannot run out of prison places. The challenge, I think, is what does that mean for the probation service?
“Our recent reports have found that around 97 per cent of probation areas are falling short of what we would expect from them in relation to the supervision and management of offenders.
“My question is, as you move people from prisons into the community, is that going to work effectively? Do they have the resources in place? Are they prioritising the right areas?
“So, whilst I can understand what is happening, I think it’s an area that desires a real scrutiny from the inspectorate, but also from ministers to ensure that the public are kept safe and people are then given a second chance when they’re released into the community.”
According to HM Inspectorate of Probation’s most recent report, 30 out of 31 probation delivery units inspected in 2022-23 were assessed as “inadequate” or “requires improvement”.
The report, authored by Mr Jones’s predecessor, Justin Russell, said that in two years since probation services were reunified into a single public sector service, provision had “got worse, not better” as inexperienced officers struggled with soaring caseloads.
Thousands of probation staff have left the service over the past two years, with almost two-thirds of the 359 officers who quit in the year to March 2023 taking with them five or more years of experience. As of March, 5,113 full-time probation officers were in post – 25 per cent below the required staffing level of 6,794.
Two-thirds of probation officers described their caseload as “unmanageable”. And, in what inspectors say is a reflection of the stress many employees are under, 55 per cent of working days lost to staff sickness in the most recent year were due to mental health issues – up from 43 per cent five years earlier.
One probation service officer who joined as a “job for life” in 2018 told The Independent last year that she now reluctantly planned to quit, saying: “We are completely overwhelmed, morale is low, and we have multiple people in our offices on long-term sick leave – so six months or more – because it is so stressful.”
Mr Jones, who was appointed in January, said while he welcomed Ms Mahmood’s plans to bring in an extra 1,000 trainee probation officers by the end of March 2025, they will not be in place when the early release scheme starts in September.
“I think I could probably be pretty confident in saying that we’re not going to have a thousand new probation officers in post by the autumn; I think they’ll be coming along in due course, maybe by the time you get into the spring of next year,” he told Trapped: The IPP Prisoner Scandal.
“If you’re joining as a trainee probation officer, newly qualified, it takes time to build your experience, given the nature of the caseload that you’re dealing with.
“And there’ll be a world of difference between somebody that is freshly trained and they’re entering this really complex and difficult world, versus somebody that has maybe 10, 15 years experience.
“So the challenge will be, I think it’s absolutely right to recruit extra probation officers, but it’s going to take time for those people to bed down to ensure that they have the experience.
“It’s not like buying an accountant from the job centre, where you can go out and say, ‘OK, then, we need accountants’ and they know how to do the maths immediately.”
There had already been a national recruitment drive to fill the gaps left by the exodus of more experienced officers, with some 2,600 people training to become probation officers as of March 2023. However, the most recent data showed nearly one in six trainees was giving up.
Meanwhile, the Tory government’s emergency end of custody supervised licence scheme – which first saw inmates freed up to 18 days early before being increased to 35 and then 70 days – will remain in place until September, despite warnings it has caused “absolute mayhem” for probation.
Some 10,000 inmates have already been freed under this scheme.
Napo probation union chief Ian Lawrence previously told The Independent: “That’s caused absolute mayhem for probation staff because we’re trying to deal with people at short notice.
“If they’re not in place with a rehabilitation plan, the chances are they’ll be recalled [to prison] in a week or two, so it’s a revolving door scenario.”
Mr Jones also told the podcast – which has helped to shine a light on the injustice facing prisoners trapped in imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences – that he hoped the new government will “look again” at the sentences, which are “hugely costly, hugely burdensome for the system”.
A 70-strong coalition of criminal justice experts and campaigners last week urged Sir Keir Starmer to end the injustice of almost 3,000 prisoners languishing on indeterminate sentences with no hope of release.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The prison system is in crisis which is putting significant pressure on the whole justice system.
“We are gripping the situation and supporting our hardworking staff, including recruiting 1,000 more probation officers to deliver robust supervision and protect the public.”
Listen to ‘Trapped: The IPP Prisoner Scandal’ here
