Rise in offenders dying in community

THE number of offenders who died while being supervised in the community rose for the last two years of privatised probation.

Forty criminals died in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland in 2018/19 while either serving a community sentence or being supervised following release from prison.

That is up from 38 in 2017/18 and 25 in 2016/17.

The 40 deaths in the last financial year included 36 men and four women.

One was killed by another person and 12 died by suicide.

Seven of the deaths were due to natural causes and five were listed as accidental. The causes of the remaining deaths were unknown.

The figures are given for Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland as a whole as the four counties form a single Community Rehabilitation Company area.

CRCs are private-sector suppliers of probation and prison-based rehabilitation services for offenders.

They were established in 2015 and took over the work of existing probation trusts.

In May, the government announced plans to scrap CRCs and renationalise probation supervision after a series of failures.

A report by then chief probation inspector Dame Glenys Stacey in March found that eight out of ten CRCs received the lowest possible rating – ‘Inadequate’ – for the implementation and delivery of probation supervision.

At the time, Dame Glenys said: “I have seen first-hand the life-changing potential of probation at its best – but probation is not working as it should.

“It is not delivering well enough for some of the most troubled and sometimes troublesome people in society, when they and deserve better.”

Nationally, the number of deaths of offenders in the community rose from 964 in 2017/18 to 1,093 in 2018/19.

That is in increase of 13 per cent in a single year.

The number of self-inflicted deaths rose from by 19 per cent from 283 to 337 in 2018/19, while those from natural causes rose seven per cent from 308 to 331.

The figures continue a trend which has seen the number of deaths rise sharply since 2014/15, when there were fewer than 600.

The main reason for the surge that year was that a new Parliamentary act the wider public meant all offenders sentenced to jail became subject to a minimum 12 months supervision in the community when released.

That increased the total number of offenders under supervision.

However, that peaked in 2016/17, and has been falling since - while deaths have continued to rise.

Offenders under supervision in the community are not in the care of HM Prison and Probation Service in the same way as offenders in jail.

Staff who work with them can encourage them to address issues surrounding their health and well-being but have less scope for direct intervention.