Supervision Stressed officers fear more fatal errors

Giving evidence at an inquest last week, England's most senior probation officer admitted that inexperienced G and unqualified staff had made a "fundamental error" by classing Damien Bendall as posing a "low risk of harm to partners and to children".

- Helen Pidd

When Bendall, who had a history of domestic violence, murdered his pregnant girlfriend and three children in September 2021, he was on probation after receiving a 24-month suspended sentence for arson. He is now serving a wholelife sentence for the murders.

Every probation officer worries that among their towering caseload will be the next Bendall, said Tania Bassett, a national official for Napo, the probation workers' trade union.

"We have to do our best to make sure that doesn't happen again.

But in the current climate, I can't see that it won't," she said. "When you put anybody under that level of continual stress and strain and pressure, mistakes will happen."

The pressures on probation will only mount after a twin set of announcements by the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, last week.