Severe staff shortages mean the beleaguered probation service cannot safely monitor prisoners in the community under new plans to free up prison spaces, senior figures have warned.
In a review ordered by justice secretary Shabana Mahmood as the prison crisis boiled over during her first days in office, her Tory predecessor, David Gauke, recommended freeing many prisoners a third of the way into their sentence and telling judges to avoid jailing people for less than a year in favour of community sentences.
While the plans have been widely welcomed, concerns have been raised over how the under-pressure probation service will cope with an influx of new offenders to manage.
Ms Mahmood is expected to accept most of the proposals, but former justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland expressed concern that the plans could merely “transfer a prison-based problem into the community”.
And probation union Napo warned that there was now a “vital window” to invest in staff and their wellbeing before the changes place “massive, massive pressure” on a service already in “chaos”.
Hailing the report as “the most important review of sentencing policy in at least a generation”, Napo chief Ian Lawrence added: “But the problem the government has right now is, if prisons are full, so is the probation service.
“And our capacity to process even more people released into the community is going to be put under massive, massive pressure … without something being done to maintain the confidence of staff. That means paying people so they don’t just leave, because people [have had] enough of the current workload situation.”
The most recent official figures suggest a shortfall of nearly 1,500 probation officers below the recommended staffing level of 7,115.
Mr Lawrence warned that this target may underestimate the true need.
Ministers have vowed to recruit a further 1,300 officers by March 2026 and while the probation service grew by 610 staff in the year to March, more than 2,000 staff – nearly 10 per cent – left over the same period. Forty per cent of probation officers who quit left with at least 10 years of experience, analysis by The Independent found.
Asked whether he believes the probation service has enough staff to safely enact the reforms, Mr Lawrence said: “Certainly not now.”
Warning that probation officers “are dealing with scores and scores – hundreds – of recall offenders every week, which is just stretching people’s capacity to cope to the wire”, he said the number of staff forced to take sickness days was “very worrying”. More than 273,000 days were lost to sickness in the year to March, nearly a third more than in 2022, official figures show.
With many regions majorly understaffed for years, HM chief inspector Martin Jones warned last year that 30 out of the 31 local probation units inspected in 2022-23 were judged to be either “inadequate” or “requiring improvement”.
An ailing probation service can have fatal consequences, with major failings identified in the murders of Zara Aleena and Terri Harris and her three children in Killamarsh the previous year.
The Independent reported in November that the number of ex-offenders charged with committing serious crimes while on probation had surged by a third to hit a record high of 770 over the previous year, for crimes including murder, rape and serious violence.
While he largely praised Mr Gauke’s review, Sir Robert warned that, unless backed up with more resources from the Treasury, “I’m worried that we’re going to transfer a prison-based problem into the community.”
He added: “If this is not properly resourced, my worry is that there would be supervision failures, further offences and inevitably that will cause massive public concern and political pressure to change course.
“The one thing we need now is a very stable policy environment, so that the probation service can actually be resourced to get on with, under this system, an increasing role.”
Also broadly backing the measures and praising Mr Gauke’s assessment “that we just cannot carry on as we are without doing something radical”, former justice committee chair Sir Bob Neill warned that the £700m announced to bolster the service on Thursday “can’t be a one-off”.
He added: “The case that you’d make to Rachel Reeves is ‘this is a classic case of investing to save’, because ultimately much more spending on probation is going to be less than both the capital and revenue costs of much more prison places.”
With much of those funds expected to be spent on a major extension of tagging and monitoring capabilities, Sir Bob commended Mr Gauke’s call to “toughen up community punishments as an alternative to prison”.
But warning that probation has “been a bit of Cinderella [service] for too long”, Sir Bob said: “There needs to be a proper workforce strategy for the probation service, a push on recruitment, better training and a concerted effort to raise the status of probation work.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “This Government will never put the public at risk by running out of prison places again.
“We are building new prisons and on track for 14,000 places by 2031 – the largest expansion since the Victorians. Our sentencing reforms will force prisoners to earn their way to release or face longer in jail for bad behaviour.
“We will also increase probation funding by £700 million by 2028/29 – a 45% rise. Since taking office, we are on track to recruit 2,300 more probation officers by March next year.”
