The quality of assessment and a staffing crisis are not the only problems facing probation (“What will it take to stop the rape and murder of women on probation?”, Comment). Risk management begins in prison with effective treatment programmes. These have all but disappeared. Management continues by establishing and maintaining links with people in allied organisations. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to get the assistance of psychiatric staff, who are overwhelmed by their workloads. Community drugs workers, often funded by local authorities, have vanished as funding dried up. Housing, employment and adult education services have little room for the homeless, drug-raddled and mentally ill people who leave prison with a discharge grant and little more. The crisis in probation is part of a wider crisis that has been brewing for more than a decade, and is systemic.
Rob Wakefield
Nailsea, Somerset
Sonia Sodha asserts that more investment in children’s services is the answer to addressing the problem of male violence. She quite rightly identifies that “experience of childhood trauma for boys is associated with a higher propensity to violence in adulthood”. What she sidesteps is that childhood trauma experienced by boys is also caused by divorce and parental separation. How much more research do we need to accept the fact that boys denied the close support of their fathers during their formative years can cause very significant emotional damage? In some disadvantaged young men, the ticking timebomb begins with the loss of their father as a steadying influence on their lives.
Elizabeth Mueller
Glasgow
