Probation officers claim staffing crisis due to soaring number of offenders

PROBATION officers who have been key to bringing freed rapist Larry Murphy back under supervision said they face a staffing crisis due to the huge number of offenders being referred to them.

Union representatives say they are down 20% on frontline staff at a time when demand for their services is rising rapidly, but the Government won’t lift its recruitment ban. Probation officers are already working with 154 serious sex offenders who were released from jail with supervision orders.

They are also responsible for a further 142 who are in prison but have supervision orders attached to their sentence and will have to be monitored on release, and that number is growing each year. There are many others who, like Larry Murphy, were sentenced before supervision orders were introduced in 2001, and are engaging with the probation services on a voluntary basis because they realise they cannot cope on their own.