Surge in prisoners dying just weeks after they are freed

A GROWING number of ex-prisoners are dying on probation.

The number of former inmates who die in the region in the weeks and months after their release, while they are still on the system’s watch, has reached new highs.

There were 80 deaths of offenders on probation supervised by Greater Manchester and Cheshire Community Rehabilitation Company in 2018/2019.

This was up from 71 deaths in 2017/2018 and just 42 in 2016/2017.

The number has nearly doubled in the years since the system was overhauled and privatised, with probation trusts replaced by Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) and the National Probation Service (NPS), four-and-a-half years ago.

Of the 80 deaths in the last financial year, 68 were men and 12 were women.

Four were killed by another person and 31 died by suicide – more than twice as many as the 15 self-inflicted deaths in 2017/18. Twenty-nine of the deaths were due to natural causes and six were listed as accidental. The causes of the remaining deaths were unknown.

The figures are given for Greater Manchester and Cheshire as a whole as the two places form a single Community Rehabilitation Company area.

CRCs are privatesector suppliers of probation and prison-based rehabilitation services for offenders. They were established in 2015 and took over the work of existing probation trusts.

But 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 10 CRCs received the lowest possible rating – ‘inadequate’ – for the implementation and delivery of probation supervision. In response to the surge, the Probation Service has said it will be launching a review into the deaths.

A Probation Service spokeswoman said: “Our staff do everything in their powers to help offenders access vital services, including support for drug or alcohol problems, but they do not have sole responsibility for caring for them and their primary purpose is to protect the general public. “Nonetheless, in light of the sharp rise in the number of deaths, we are conducting a review of the deaths of people under supervision to better understand the underlying causes.” 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.