Union warns of probation officer shortage ahead of prisoners’ early releases

Ministers will struggle to prepare for next month’s early release of thousands of prisoners, a union has warned, after the latest figures showed a drop in the number of probation officers.

Ministry of Justice data shows there were 178 fewer probation officers over the last quarter, as the service gets ready to monitor another 5,500 prisoners released over the next year despite deepening concerns over increased workloads for staff.

Up to 2,000 prisoners are expected to be released in the second week of September as part of an early release scheme, called SDS40 , which will allow many prisoners to walk from prison after serving 40% of their sentences.

A second tranche of up to 1,700 prisoners, all jailed for more than five years, are expected to be freed in late October after the law was changed by the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, to relieve pressure on overcrowded prisons.

A senior official from Napo, the probation officers’ union, said its members were trying to prepare for the early release scheme but the government was unable to maintain staffing levels, let alone recruit more, as required.

“At a time when probation is under even more pressure from workloads in preparation for the SDS40 early release scheme, we now see a drop in staffing numbers. HMPPS [HM Prison and Probation Service] needs to understand why people are leaving, and this will include pay. The crisis in our justice system is a result of years of cuts and the government must take urgent action to invest in the whole system,” Tania Bassett, a Napo national official, said.

According to Bassett, SDS40 requires probation staff to carry out extensive pre-release work. This includes reviewing risk assessments, making referrals to accommodation including probation hostels, carrying out home visits, coordinating with victim liaison officers and domestic abuse support officers and developing robust multi-agency safeguarding plans.

“Doing this work at a time when many staff are on annual leave has put enormous pressure on probation staff. HM Prison and Probation Service has been telling unions that probation will be fully staffed since 2014,” she said.

MoJ figures show there were 5,160 full-time band 4 probation officers in post in June 2024, which is a decrease of 178 compared with March 2024.

Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation in England and Wales, told the Guardian in July that the current probation model was “not sustainable” and suggested ministers should free up capacity by no longer asking probation officers to monitor 40,000 people released from prison after short custodial sentences for crimes such as shoplifting.

As part of an overview of the probation system, which manages more than 240,000 offenders a year, Jones said each of the service’s 12 regions in England and Wales were already struggling to cope with the number of cases. More than 95% of probation delivery units examined by the watchdog were falling below the standards set for good practice, he said.

The way that offenders are monitored in the community has come under intense scrutiny since the murder of Zara Aleena, a law graduate, in east London in 2022. Her killer, Jordan McSweeney, who had a long history of misogynistic and racially aggravated incidents, should have been seen by probation officers as a high-risk offender and recalled to prison after missing appointments. Instead, he was incorrectly assessed as being of medium risk and remained free to attack Aleena.

That case followed the exposure of failings by the probation service before Damien Bendall murdered three children and his pregnant partner in Derbyshire in 2021.

On Monday, the government said it would launch Operation Early Dawn , a longstanding plan that means defendants waiting for a court appearance can be held in police cells for longer until prison space is available.

Related: Prison crowding emergency measures a ‘sticking plaster’, Starmer told

The emergency scheme has been announced as hundreds of rioters are jailed in the wake of unrest this summer.

The director of public prosecutions has said the criminal justice system requires “considerable investment” as the jailed rioters continue to put pressure on overcrowded prisons.

In a piece for the Times, Stephen Parkinson defended the “brisk” nature of the disorder prosecutions, saying cases such as rape and domestic violence take longer to build and are more “complex”.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We inherited a prison system in crisis and have taken difficult but necessary action to make sure we can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public, and since then the Probation Service has been planning for these releases.

“Everyone released will be strictly monitored, face tough licence conditions like electronic tagging and curfews and could be recalled to prison if they breach licence conditions.”