Warning on military jail release of offenders

SEX OFFENDERS and violent criminals are being freed from the UK’s military jail “without any safeguards or probation supervision”, inspectors have warned.

“Considerable gaps” in protection arrangements meant checks were not being carried out to establish whether some offenders could still pose a risk to the public after release from the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Military Corrective Training Centre (MCTC).

A prisons inspectorate report also found victims in the armed forces were not being told when detainees were returning to work alongside them.

Formerly a prisoner of war camp, the centre in Colchester, Essex, is the last remaining of its kind and provides “corrective training” for service personnel detained under armed forces laws for anything from two weeks up to two years.

More than 260 people can be held at the site, but this has rarely exceeded 50 in recent years and stood at 33 at the time of the inspection in January.

There had been “some improvements in public protection since the last inspection, but considerable gaps remained”, according to the report.

Although registered sex offenders were now subject to national monitoring under the so-called Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (Mappa), “other sexual and violent offenders who fell outside Mappa’s remit were released without any safeguards or probation supervision”, it added.

“For detainees who had committed a sexual or violent offence, there was no systematic assessment of their risk of harm to others, or routine monitoring of their telephone calls or mail, either on arrival or when intelligence dictated, which undermined public protection measures.”

The MoD has been contacted for comment.