Report says service to victims of violent and sexual crimes is ‘simply not good enough’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

“Wholly unsatisfactory” probation services in London are not giving enough support to victims of violent and sexual crimes, inspectors say.

In at least one in five reviewed cases, victims of serious crime were not offered access to a statutory scheme that is supposed to keep them updated on offenders.

The victim contact scheme (VCS) allows victims to find out about any changes to an offender’s sentence and when they will be released.

Dame Glenys Stacey, the chief inspector of probation, said: “Some victims are not being offered a service at all, while others are receiving a service that is simply not good enough.”

She said that after “significant, parliamentary and public interest” in the London service’s work, it was “deeply concerning to see that some victims of serious crime are still being failed”.

The Ministry of Justice was criticised in 2018 when it initially granted parole to the serial sex attacker John Worboys. Worboys’ victims learned of the decision to release him from prison through the media.

In its response to Stacey’s report, the MoJ said improvement was “clearly needed”.

Inspectors gave the London branch of the National Probation Service (NPS), which manages more than 17,000 offenders, an overall rating of “requires improvement”.

The NPS is a public body established in 2014 to oversee the supervision of high-risk offenders. The rest of probation services were outsourced to private companies known as community rehabilitation companies.

Inspectors raised concerns about other aspects of the division’s work to protect the public. In one in five examined cases, the probation officer did not have regular enough contact with the offender they were supervising to “manage and minimise the risk of harm safely”.

Staff shortages were partly blamed for the service’s shortcomings. The report noted that the London division had more than 150 unfilled job vacancies and was relying heavily on agency and temporary staff.

Under the VCS scheme, victims of violent or sexual crimes can apply for licence conditions to be imposed on freed offenders to prevent them from making contact.

Last week the government announced the probation sector would be renationalised in England and Wales, five years after Chris Grayling introduced widely criticised changes.

An MoJ spokesperson said: “We have acted quickly to address these issues by creating a new dedicated victims’ forum to improve the quality of victim support, introducing new victim-specific training and recruiting across London, with 211 new staff joining over the past year.”