PROBATION IS A JOKE IN BRITAIN

Four out of ten criminals are released before the completion of assessments to determine whether they are a risk to the public, a report by Home Office watchdogs discloses today. Offenders were sometimes free for “very lengthy” periods before prison staff, police and probation officers had completed the assessments and decided how they should be monitored.The study found that plans to manage high-risk and very high-risk offenders were completed within five days of release for only half the criminals.

The report was drawn up by Andrew Bridges, the chief probation inspector, Anne Owers, in charge of prison inspectors, and Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of constabulary. It was commissioned after public anger and Home Office concern was generated by a series of murders committed by offenders on probation. The report looked at the links between police, prisons and probation and the system of assessments of prisoners. It was found that there was “a clear need for improvement in about one third of the case work” examined last year.

Mr Bridges said: “While it will never be possible to eliminate risk, it is right to expect the work to be done to a consistently high standard.” A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Since the inspection concluded the completion of assessments on high-risk offenders has increased.”

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AUSTRALIA: NO JAIL FOR VICIOUS ATTACK

A teenage boy who stabbed and seriously injured radio newsreader Rowan Barker outside a Sydney party has been given a two-year suspended jail term. The 17-year-old, who cannot be named, was sentenced in the NSW District Court at Penrith today for maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm on Mr Barker on December 3 last year. Mr Barker, a newsreader with the Macquarie Radio network, was in hospital in intensive care after being stabbed several times outside a Christmas party at St Ives, in Sydney's north.

Mr Barker today said he was "dumbstruck" by the court outcome. "There is no deterrent set by this sentence as far as I can see," he told his network. "He doesn't even get a slap on the wrist and I get a slap in the face and punched in the stomach. That's what I feel like."

Previous court hearings have been told Mr Barker was attacked in a case of mistaken identity. The youth, who used cannabis and began binge drinking at age 14, was extremely intoxicated and claimed no memory of the stabbing. He pleaded guilty to maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm in company, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years jail. Judge John Nicholson today sentenced him to a two-year jail term but suspended the sentence, saying the youth's rehabilitation was a priority and that would best be undertaken in the community.

The judge placed the teenager on a two-year good behaviour bond with strict conditions, including that he submit to random drug tests five times a month for nine months. The youth was free to leave court after today's sentencing.

A spokesman for NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus said the Government had asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider challenging the youth's sentence. Mr Barker, who had hoped the teenager's sentence might have deterred others from similar acts of violence, said he was "just absolutely flabbergasted". "The message it sends, I think, is abhorrent to the rest of society," he told Macquarie Radio. "It says that you can come within millimetres of taking somebody's life and not really pay for it in any way."

Mr Barker said he was attacked after he asked the youth, who was looking for someone who lived next door, to leave the Christmas party. "One of the wounds was very close to my heart, in fact did nick the top of my heart, and caused some damage," he said. "There's a part of my heart that doesn't have the blood supply to it any more as a result of that injury."

Two other people, neither of whom can be named, were also charged over the stabbing. In July, a 19-year-old Artarmon man who drove the getaway car was sentenced to 200 hours community service for concealing a serious offence. A 20-year-old man was charged last year with Mr Barker's attempted murder and maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm, but subsequently died.

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(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)