Huge workloads affecting offender supervision claim
The probation branch of Impact welcomed the recent announcement of 70 new probation officers in Budget 2008, but pointed out that all of those are for the Young People’s Probation Service and that most of those have already been appointed this year.
The branch said the budget did not allocate any new officers to carry out the requirements of Section 99 of the 2006 Criminal Justice Act, under which a judge can give an offender a split sentence involving prison followed by a period of supervision in the community.
The probation officer can re-enter the case back to court if the offender breaches his supervision conditions and the rest of the prison term can be reactivated.
“There are a large number of people going into prison with a custodial sentence and a portion of it suspended on condition of post-release supervision,” said David Williamson, of Impact’s probation branch.
“That number is growing. There will be additional requirements to supervision. Some are doing long sentences for serious offences. The resource issue is totally unaddressed in the budget.”
He said there was no figure on the number of people on these orders and how they were going to be monitored. He said that in Mountjoy Prison alone there were 60 known offenders on such orders.
Mr Williamson claimed this was yet another task assigned to probation officers without any extra staff.
In addition to the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act, probation officers are dealing with growing numbers of sex offenders who are on post-release supervision orders, as well as “lifers” — those given life sentences for murder who remain supervised for life.
“The number on life sentence has increased significantly. In Mountjoy there are over 30 life sentence prisoners and that’s not one of the biggest prisons for life sentences. There is no recognition of the growth of those.”
He said there were now 112 sex offenders on post-release supervision and another 117 sex offenders in prison who will be subject to supervision on release.
He said unlike those given partial suspended sentences, sex offenders were managed by a protocol under which all parties — Courts Service, Prison Service, Probation Service and Garda — knew their responsibilities.
A Department of Justice spokeswoman said Budget 2008 boosted probation staff numbers by 71, bringing total strength to 435. She said while less than half of these staff went to juvenile justice, the remaining staff improved the capacity of officers to deal with adult offenders.
She said the Probation Service was taking all necessary steps to give priority to managing the persons dealt with under the Criminal Justice Act and was liaising with the Prison Service.
