Probation Service: Chief Inspector’s Reviews into Serious Further Offences

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 24 January.

“Today the Chief Inspector of Probation has published his independent review into the probation service’s management of Jordan McSweeney, who brutally murdered Zara Aleena as she walked home after an evening out with friends. Today’s report follows another independent review into the management of Damien Bendall, who murdered an entire family, killing pregnant Terri Harris, her two children, John Paul and Lacey, and Lacey’s 11 year-old friend, Connie Gent. Bendall also pleaded guilty to rape.

The thoughts of us all are with the families and friends of the victims. They have gone through and continue to go through the most unimaginable suffering, and the passage of time will never diminish the magnitude of their loss. Immediately upon learning that first Bendall and then McSweeney had been charged with murder while subject to probation supervision, Ministers asked the chief inspector to undertake independent reviews. Both reviews set out clear and serious failings by the probation service. I am profoundly sorry for those failings, and the Deputy Prime Minister and I are seeking opportunities to make apologies in person. It is incumbent on us now to do everything we can to ensure that those failings do not and cannot happen ever again.

The chief inspector’s report is very clear: the level of risk posed by McSweeney and Bendall was not assessed properly by the probation service. If McSweeney had been assessed as posing a higher level of risk, he would have been more closely monitored by senior staff under more stringent licence conditions. If the report to the court had taken account of Bendall’s known risks to women and young girls, he would not have been recommended for an electronically monitored curfew to the home of Terri Harris and her two young children.