Most probation services are over capacity, leaked data reveals

Terri Harris and Zara Aleena were murdered after Probation Service failings

The majority of the service which tries to prevent criminals reoffending in England and Wales is working at excessive capacity, internal figures seen by the BBC show.

Some officers in the Probation Service have workloads twice as large as their recommended capacity.

A whistleblower warned the risks to the public are "significant".

The government said it would "recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe".

The revelations about the extent of the probation crisis come after two damning reports into failures to monitor offenders who went on to commit murders.

His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Probation, Justin Russell, said the service failed at every stage to assess the risk of killer Damien Bendall, who murdered his partner Terri Harris, her two children and their 11-year-old friend.

Mr Russell also said it was impossible to be sure the public was safe because of the quality of work in parts of the Probation Service, after Jordan McSweeney murdered law student Zara Aleena nine days after being released from prison.

The internal figures confirm inspectors' concerns about "unmanageable workloads", Mr Russell said. He added that staff shortages in some parts of the country are "severely" affecting the service's ability to manage offenders, including "those who pose a serious threat to the public".

Probation officers play a critical role assessing how much risk criminals pose to us, during the sentencing process, during sentences served in the community, and after someone is released from prison.

Their jobs combine face-to-face meetings with criminals with writing reports and making checks to prevent them descending back into criminality.

The BBC has seen a snapshot of data from an internal Probation Service workload measurement system which monitors daily case numbers and warns if staff are operating beyond their capacity.

The numbers were collected this week and assess workload based on a points system which takes into account the complexity of cases.

In the 12 regions of England and Wales, 10 were operating at over 100% of capacity. Only Wales and the North East Region were just below.

Seven were "showing red" with average scores of more than 110%.

Justice Minister Alex Chalk said in 2021 that "anyone over 110% for a period of four consecutive weeks is deemed to have an excessive workload", adding that there were policies to help staff who meet this threshold.

London is under most pressure at around 127% of its capacity on average, followed by the Yorkshire and Humber and Eastern England regions at 118%.

Our analysis suggests at the moment the data was collected, more than 400 probation officers were working at 160% of their capacity or more, with some over 200%.

This includes probation officers still in training, as well as more experienced staff.

In some cases, staff had individual caseloads of more than 70 people.

The probation watchdog concluded in 2021 that "in our opinion, it is difficult for even experienced practitioners to deal with 60, 70, 80 or more cases properly".

The figures do fluctuate, but insiders told the BBC the pressure on the workforce creates an inevitable risk of mistakes.

Staff said the workload makes it harder to dig deeper into cases and chase up checks with police forces, who often fail to respond.

"We are supposed to question everything, but people don't because it opens a can of worms," one said.

Even offenders rated low and medium risk can be people capable of killing themselves and others, probation officers say.

A string of cases have demonstrated the risks of failing to carry out checks. One murder a week is committed by an offender on probation.

Nadine Marshall, whose son Conner was murdered by David Braddon while he was on probation for drug offences and assaulting a police officer, said the data shows there are not enough probation workers and the service is "completely inept".

"Probation officers are being fed to the dogs by the management and structure of the probation system. They are left to carry a heavy load which is unsustainable," she said.

Nadine Marshall, pictured with son Conner, said the probation system is "completely inept"

An internal report on the case, marked "sensitive" but obtained by the BBC, describes a key probation officer involved feeling "overwhelmed" by work and says the "alertness to risk" had suffered.

Braddon missed a number of meetings with the service and the reasons were not fully investigated, the report found.

At moments when an offender breaches the terms of their licence or sentencing conditions, the probation service is under pressure to gather evidence to support an offender being sent or returned to prison.

A whistleblower told the BBC that if this does not happen, "you're just sitting there waiting for another offence to be committed".

Low level breaches of sentence conditions are supposed to be dealt with within six days.

But a recent data snapshot for London also shown to the BBC reveals that of more than 860 breaches, 669 had not been resolved within that target time.

After three months, 198 were still outstanding.

A whistleblower told the BBC staff were "burnt out" and "working late every night and weekends".

Another junior probation officer said they had dealt with caseloads "in the high 70s", sometimes seeing up to 12 offenders a day, though recently the demand had reduced. At one point in the pandemic, an offender they were overseeing committed a serious offence.

Pressure on the probation service grew with changes in the law leading to an increasing number of cases requiring their attention.

Then in 2013, there was a disastrous reorganisation of the service. It was reversed by 2021, but the probation inspectorate said it played a major part in pushing up workloads.

Covid made matters worse, with probation officers reduced to going to offenders' doorsteps for face to face meetings.

By next month 4,000 new probation officers are being recruited, the Ministry of Justice said.

But front line officers are leaving because of the mental health pressures they face.

In the year up to September 2022, data reveals that mental health or behavioural issues were the cause of half of all days of staff absence. This figure is rising steadily.

The Ministry of Justice said "we have taken immediate steps to address the serious issues raised by recent reviews and are investing £155m more every year into probation to improve the supervision of offenders."

The ministry said the extra spending would "reduce officers' caseloads and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe".

The government is also introducing more rigorous requirements for prisoners to be given parole, and the power for the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab to prevent the most dangerous offenders being released.