Prison and probation staffing dangerously low

Prison and probation staffing in England and Wales is approaching dangerously low levels, the Ministry of Justice has said.

The comments were published by mistake on a government website as part of an £8m year-long contract awarded to a London company, PeopleScout, to manage the ministry's recruitment marketing.

The wording was spotted by the Labour Party.

The BBC understands the comments were not meant to be made public.

The contract blames "government commitments on prison expansion and high staff attrition levels" for the shortages.

It warned 15% of prisons are expected to have fewer than 80% of the prison staff that they need.

And on the probation service, a third of regions in England and Wales have fewer than 80% of the necessary probation officers.

Shadow justice secretary Steve Reed said the whole country would be alarmed at the warning.

"Thirteen years of Conservative incompetence have left our probation service in tatters. Violent criminals are left to roam the streets without proper supervision, placing the public at serious risk," he said.

"If a third of the country has 'dangerously low levels' of probation officers, we risk seeing even more cases where violent criminals who never should have been released from prison in the first place are left unsupervised to strike again."

Earlier this year, the Chief Inspector of Probation, Justin Russell, said the service had failed at every stage to assess the risk of Damien Bendall, who murdered his partner, her two children and their 11-year-old friend.

The failings meant Bendall was deemed suitable to live with his pregnant partner Terri Harris and her two children when he could, instead, have been sent to prison after being sentenced for arson just months before the murders.

Relatives of the victims were said to be "shocked" by the failings.

Mr Russell also found failings in the case of Jordan McSweeney, who sexually assaulted and murdered law graduate Zara Aleena nine days after he was released from prison on licence.

McSweeney, a man with a history of violence, was wrongly assessed by staff as a "medium risk."

They were said to be under mounting pressure at the time, and one worker faced disciplinary action over the case.

Ms Aleena's aunt, Farah Naz, accused the Probation Service of having "blood on its hands" and said her niece "would have been alive today if probation had done their jobs better".

In February, internal figures, seen by the BBC, showed that some probation officers in England and Wales had workloads twice as large as their recommended capacity.

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

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "We have hired a record 4,000 probation officers since 2021 and we will recruit up to 5,000 more prison officers by the mid-2020s to steer offenders away from crime and keep people safe."

The comments have now been removed from the website.