Public safety has been put at risk by violent offenders being released straight from Stocken prison into the community.

In a report published today (Weds), following an unannounced inspection earlier this year, HM Chief Inspector of Prison Peter Clarke says that around 100 inmates a year are being set free without going through a crucial resettlement process first.

The report states: "We...had a major concern about the risks to public protection potentially posed by the small number of prisoners, around eight each month, released from Stocken into the community.

"This created potentially serious risks, given the profile of the prisoner population at Stocken, and those risks were compounded by weaknesses in the internal assessment of risk...."

HMP Stocken is a category C training prison and, at the time of inspection, held some 833 adult male prisoners, more than 50% of whom had been convicted of crimes of violence. Ninety-seven percent of prisoners were serving sentences of more than four years.

The report says: "Public protection processes were weak and not always well understood within the OMU [Offender Management Unit responsible for helping prisoners achieve their sentence plan].

"The interdepartmental risk management team (IRMT) meeting was poorly attended and was not given sufficient priority across the prison.

"Although the establishment routinely released about eight prisoners each month, the meeting did not routinely consider high-risk prisoners approaching release, to provide assurance that their risks were being managed appropriately.

"We looked at the cases of four high-risk prisoners who were due to be released in February 2019, and none of them had been discussed at the IRMT meeting in the previous six months."

Overall, inspectors found a 'mixed picture of progress' since their last visit to the prison in 2015, with 29 out of 60 recommended improvements made.

The prison's rating has declined from 'good' in 2015 to 'not sufficiently good'.

The full report can be read by clicking on the red button below.

Photo: (c) Google2019i