Prisoners on probabtion account for at least one murder and two rapes every week of the year

[IwantToRetire]

Freed prisoners are committing a record number of serious further offences including murders, rapes and violent assaults, the chief inspector of probation has warned.

Almost 900 serious crimes have been recorded in the past year as being committed by offenders under supervision of probation after being released from jail or while serving community sentences.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/30/freed-prisoners-violent-crimes/

and at https://archive.is/F8wp0

Not clear if this includes those on early release because of over crowding.

Shocked to see that the largest number of victims are children under 13, and more likely than not to be girls.

?
What the statistics you've posted actually mean is surely to the point?

Agree with you. Frankly it’s a fucking outrage and suggests “being let out on probation” doesn’t work for members of the public who may be raped or murdered by the prisoner on probation.

The victim might be my child or your child.

The legal system isn’t keeping the general public safe. It’s horrifying.

I work in the system and I'm genuinely surprised by these stats. That's appalling.

Prisoners who are supervised by probation officers commit crimes, yes, it's nothing new.
Probation officers are not superheroes on Orwellian 24/7 watch stopping them from any possible criminal activity. They are human beings doing a very difficult job in particularly difficult circumstances, especially for the last decade.

Of course they are always a risk, are you delusional or just daft? They are risk assessed. It's nothing new women and children are more at risk too. We always are. Majority of former prisoners are men. They are now being released from prisons very quickly which is wrong, but the prison and criminal justice system has practically collapsed under the Conservatives. Labour have no idea how to fix this. Do you know? Awesome, if so. Do tell.

Many prisoners that are being released quickly would have been in for sex offences. Of course they are at high risk of reoffending and the victims would be vulnerable people - women and children. The risk is even higher because there aren't enough probation officers to supervise massively increased releases from prisons and recalls.

Not sure what you're getting at or expecting from this thread but you're banging at the wrong door on this occasion. The entire criminal justice system does not protect us or our children and never has, not probation.

And it’s all men..

The figures say that in the period concerned 107 children under 13 were raped or sexually assualted.

Why start speculating about this that or the other, as though this is just an starting of point to raise other issues.

No the figures do not say that. Rape and sexual assaults include a small number of children under 13. In the figures that I quoted from the report, less than 10 children under 13 out of the 107 people were sexually assaulted et cetera.

I have not been speculating or using it to raise other issues. I am trying to discuss the point that you raised. But your interpretation of the figures was wrong.

This is appalling. And these are the ones daft enough to get caught. Not every offence, everyone who was caught. This population may be more likely to be caught (more closely monitored, daft enough to be caught before) but as PP has said, the Probation service isn’t superhuman and I doubt we are seeing every offence here.

The only acceptable level is nil.

Some more context would perhaps help the discussion, such as the number of people granted probation in each year. The use of 2021/22 as a base may be misleading given there were still some Covid restrictions and court delays.

The figures are released quarterly and the most recently available are from June 2025. There were 244,209 people subject to Probation supervision at that point.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2025/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2025

The 10 offences specifying victims under 13 are not "of the 107" - the 107 are notifications of certain serious further offences from 2023-24 that resulted in convictions. The 10 come from a 20% random sample of all reviews of SFOs notified in 2024-25, so you'd expect around another 40 that weren't sampled. And only about half the notifications of SFOs from 2024-25 had been reviewed at the time of writing the report - it might be that these kind of offences get reviewed more urgently or less urgently, or that there'd be another 50. Two per week seems a reasonable rough estimate (though of charges, not convictions).

Yes, that's true. But what I am disputing is that all of those rapes and sexual assaults were on children under 13. They were not - in fact as you pointed out yourself:

"The first row of that table totals four separate offences, only two of which specify victims under 13."

so yes, two assaults a week is roughly what that represents, but on people many of whom are adults. The figures are not clearly shown and it is an opaque way of labelling them to stuff 4 separate categories into one line.

I agre that we don't know how many of the 107 convictions that arose from charges brought in 2023-24 of offences pertaining to victims under 13. But I suggest that somewhere in the order of 100 charges were brought in 2024-25 of offences pertaining to victims under 13 - the 10 that are listed are only a 1 in 5 sample of the 1 in 2 for which reviews were completed.

Perhaps the most striking part of the 2025 report:

Concerningly, we found in 91 per cent of the SFO reviews, the risk of serious harm categories assigned to the case by the probation service had been inaccurately assessed. This meant that in most cases the overall risk of serious harm level was incorrect, the relevant categories and those at risk were not adequately identified, and/or the nature of the risk of serious harm posed by the individual was not captured accurately in the assessment.

From 2024:

As already highlighted in this report, HM Inspectorate of Probation quality assured 87 reviews from April 2023 to April 2024. Of those reviews, 62 were identified as having inaccuracies in the risk of serious harm assessment, which equates to 71 per cent.

From 2023:

In 58 per cent of the 86 reviews
quality assured, the SFO reviewing
manager, or our quality assurance
inspector, considered that at some point in the supervision period the
assessment of risk of serious harm
completed by the probation
practitioner was inaccurate or did not fully consider the nature and extent
of the risks presented by the
individual.

2022:

Practitioners are underestimating the nature and level of risk of serious harm that
the person on probation poses, which means they do not always recognise or
respond to emerging risk factors. This is exacerbated by practitioners focusing on
providing support, to the detriment of managing risk and delivering offence-focused
intervention

Of course it's fair to wonder if some of these criminals oughtn't to have been granted parole, or have been given a non-custodial sentence; but it seems that the probation service have been getting worse at assessing risks for years.

Ok, thanks for your comments @Manteiga.

The "most striking" part about the probation report demonstrates the poor state of the probation service in every aspect.

Thank you to OP for raising this matter.

Worse still, the inspectorate have been warning us for years.

This.

There can't be efficient supervision if many practitioners work at 150-200% capacity.

PPs and OP need to read into the wider issues before criticising.

Remember that ONS don't include offences against minors in the national statistics, (they also used to have an upper age limit but that was scrapped) so that can make it harder to track them unless you already know where to look.

''The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) provides the best measure of victimisation and estimated that 1.9% of people (3.0% of females and 0.7% of males) aged 16 years and over were victims of sexual assault (including attempts) in year ending (YE) March 2025 survey; this equates to around 900,000 people (739,000 females and 162,000 males).''

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/sexualoffencesinenglandandwalesoverview/yearendingmarch2025