Serious Further Offences
Every year HM Inspectorate of Probation publishes an annual report of Inspectorate flags concerns as number of SFO reviews meeting required standards continues to decline. The 2024 edition was published yesterday (28 November 2024). Serious further offences (SFOs) are specific violent and sexual offences committed by people who were, or had very recently been, under probation supervision at the time of the offence. Each year there are usually around 500 individuals subject to probation supervision who are charged with serious further offences, however notably in 2023/2024 this number increased by 33 per cent to 770.3 Of those charged, between fifty and sixty per cent are likely to be convicted of the SFO, with the remaining cases either being convicted of a less serious offence, acquitted or the charges are dropped. You can see detailed information on recent SFOs in the infographic below which I have reproduced from the Inspectorate’s report.
What is an SFO review?
The SFO review process begins when a person on probation has been charged and appears in court for an SFO qualifying offence. This alleged offence must have been committed while the person was under probation supervision or within 28 working days of their supervision period ending. Following the initial court appearance, the SFO review is commissioned.
SFO reviews are mandatory when:
- any eligible supervised individual has been charged with (including ancillary and inchoate offences such as attempt, conspiracy to commit, incitement to commit and encouraging or assisting commission): murder, manslaughter, other specified offences causing death, rape or assault by penetration, a sexual offence against a child under 13 years of age, or qualifying offences under terrorism or anti-terrorism legislation during a period of management by a probation service
- any eligible person on probation has been charged with, and appears in court for, another offence on the SFO list, and they are or have been assessed as high or very high risk of serious harm during their current supervision period, or they have not been subject to a risk assessment during that period.
The SFO review is intended to provide rigorous scrutiny of cases involving people who, while under probation supervision, were charged with specified violent, sexual, or terrorist offences. The review should provide assurance to the public that the probation service is committed to reviewing practice following an arrest and charge for an SFO, and to identifying areas for improvement where required. The SFO review should also provide victims and their families with detailed information on how the person was supervised, and what action has been set following the review. It should provide ministers, and others within HMPPS and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), with information as required, particularly if the case is identified as high profile.
Quality assurance
The Inspectorate’s SFO inspectors quality assured 87 SFO reviews this year, rating 46 per cent as ‘Good’, but 52 per cent as ‘Requires improvement’, emphasising the need for SFO teams to be sufficiently resourced and experienced, for more effective management oversight, and for improved centralised training.
The report also highlighted the backlog of SFO reviews due in many regions – causing delays in the probation service identifying and implementing the required learning, and in sharing findings with victims and their families.
For the first time, this year’s annual report also sought reflections from probation staff on their experiences of the SFO review process, and their experiences of the organisational culture linked to SFO reviews.
This raised recurring concerns about the SFO review policy framework, how it is applied, and its outcomes and impact. There was also feedback that the level of support provided to those involved in SFO reviews needs to be improved, with respondents concerned about a ‘culture of blame’ existing within HMPPS. Staff reported they often felt individual accountability was attributed to them, with a failure to acknowledge and address wider and procedural systemic issues.
Chief Inspector of Probation, Martin Jones, commented on the report:
“The probation service manages a large and complex caseload in the community. By its very nature, risk is inherent in that work and can never be eliminated. Against that backdrop, the number of SFOs committed each year remain low as a proportion of the overall workload, but the impact of serious further offences on victims and their families cannot be underestimated, and they are an important opportunity for learning. So, it is disappointing we have continued to see a reduction in the number of SFO reviews that meet the required standard. More work is needed to develop and support reviewing managers, alongside more transparency and the sharing of high-quality data and effective practice across regions to support a collective developmental approach.”
Disappointingly, but perhaps not surprisingly given the chronic under-staffing that the probation service has been experiencing for several years now, the Inspectorate’s recommendations for improving SFO reviews are almost identical to those in last year’s report.
