Friday 31 October 2008

Joining The Dots…

Between April 2006 and April this year, offenders serving community sentences and suspended sentences were convicted of a total of 121 murders.
But don’t blame the Ministry of Justice! How could they possibly know…? They aren’t psychic, you know:
The Ministry of Justice insisted that the vast majority of offenders on probation had originally committed only minor offences, giving no clue that they would later commit serious crimes when on probation.
Really…?

And yet:
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union, said: "The number of offenders involved in further serious crimes is less than 0.5 per cent of the total under supervision.
"Obviously we would like to get that figure as low as we can but we are dealing with people with mental health problems, drug and alcohol addictions and further offences are inevitable."
Looks like Harry can predict ‘inevitable’ further offences. So can anyone, given the circumstances.

Not sure why it comes as a surprise to the MinJust apparatchiks though…

7 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

I looked at this yesterday.

That's the giveaway:The Ministry of Justice insisted that the vast majority of offenders on probation had originally committed only minor offences, giving no clue that they would later commit serious crimes when on probation

Well, duh, of course the 'vast majority' of probationers have only committed minor offences, most offences are only minor offences. What they don't admit (or don't even know, not sure what's worse) is that it isn't minor offenders who go on to rape and murder, a shoflifter will go back to shoplifting etc.

We've got Macgill J to blame for half of this!

Letters From A Tory said...

Makes you wonder how many murders it will take for them to consider it an issue worth looking into - no doubt with a long and expensive government review.

Anonymous said...

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union, said: "The number of offenders involved in further serious crimes is less than 0.5 per cent of the total under supervision..."

Or in other words, one death is a tragedy, 121 is a statistic.

Anonymous said...

"Makes you wonder how many murders it will take for them to consider it an issue worth looking into"

Not how many, but who.

patently said...

an issue worth looking into - no doubt with a long and expensive government review.

I'll do it for them.

Report into the Latest Discovery of Stunning Incompetence by HMG

A number of isolated errors ere made in individual cases.

Lessons have been learnt. The completely unrelated NuLab press release entitled "New Procedures for the Ministry of Justice, published 20 minutes before this report, sets out a bright new world in which everything will be lovely again.

--------------------------------

There. That'll be £500k please.

Anonymous said...

"There. That'll be £500k please."

£500k..? That wouldn't even buy the tea and biscuits for a really looooong review... ;)

patently said...

I'm very reasonably priced, though ... just trying to do my bit for taxpayer value ;-)