Nine out of 105 approved premises in England and Wales are now closed. The reason is simple: the probation service has run out of staff.
These hostels house around 2,000 of the most dangerous offenders released from prison on licence. Residents typically stay eight to 12 weeks. Staff are meant to monitor them closely, testing for drugs and alcohol, watching for violence, self-harm and overdoses. Get this wrong and people get hurt.
Yet officials have confirmed that untrained security guards are being used to plug the gaps. A survey by the probation union Napo found that 16 out of 21 hostel staff had seen guards doing work that should be done by trained probation officers.
Warnings ignored
Martin Jones, HM chief inspector of probation, did not mince his words.
Approved premises are the place where the highest risk individuals go after release and it is vital that as many places are there for them and you have to get the right staff in place. If you have security guards doing their jobs, there is a big risk of things going wrong and the public being put in danger. The government has to get this right.
Recent inspections have already flagged serious problems: missed checks on high-risk residents, sloppy processes around suicide and self-harm, and faulty CCTV. This is not a system operating at the margin. It is failing at the sharp end.
In May an internal email from Michelle Jarman-Howe, interim director general of operations at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, admitted the staffing challenges had forced temporary closures. She thanked colleagues for stepping up. Polite, but it does not fix the problem.
