Probation Issues
Increasingly, the Probation Services are becoming less reliable.
Accuracy of reporting from Home Probation Officers is a key feature that we see becoming less reliable. Frequent changes of personnel and the withdrawal of rights to travel for Probation Officers due to financial restrictions, are the leading causes of this.
Over the past year in particular, we have seen situations where it has been necessary to take out High Court Witness Summonses against Probation Officers where failure to attend would have disadvantaged our clients. Failure to attend where a summons has been issued can lead to their being fined £5,000, imprisoned for six months, or both.
It is a disgraceful set of affairs, but life sentence prisoners must be aware of these issues and deal with them appropriately and diplomatically, where possible through solicitors. Again, we have a tremendous amount of experience in this area and are able to avoid situations as that above, to our client's benefit.
To qualify for release, a life sentence prisoner must demonstrate that they have had at least two to three full one week home leaves to the proposed release address, as well as having an identified Home Probation Officer responsible for their case. Ideally, the life sentence prisoner will have met their Home Probation Officer.
Where this is not the case, we urge our clients to instruct us on such issues very early on in the period immediately preceding a release application, either orally or on paper. Usually, these are issues which are dealt with a year in advance of, for example, a consideration for release in an Oral Hearing.
Identifying a Home Probation Officer can in itself take several weeks or months, and again we can help to identify that person.