Long before he killed her, Joanna Simpson’s husband had secretly dug what would become her grave.
The couple were separated and in the final throes of finalising their divorce when Robert Brown, a British Airways pilot, battered his wife to death with a hammer as their two young children cowered in a nearby room. Joanna, who had become frightened of her controlling husband, was only days away from what should have been the last court hearing to end their marriage. Brown buried her in a secluded corner of Windsor Great Park in a makeshift coffin he had prepared earlier, and then the following day called the police.
In court, he didn’t deny killing her, but claimed that he had temporarily “just lost it”. The defence maintained that he had suffered from an “adjustment disorder” brought on by the stress of the divorce, which had made him lose control but disappeared again shortly afterwards. There were gasps in the courtroom when the jury acquitted him of murder; the judge, observing that Brown had clearly “intended to kill”, and had prepared thoroughly beforehand, sentenced him to 26 years for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. But, having served nearly half his sentence, Brown will be automatically eligible for release on licence later this year – unless Joanna’s family succeed in the campaign they’re launching shortly to stop that happening.
Suella Braverman’s announcement this week that police will have to treat domestic violence as a national threat, like terrorism, is a welcome move from the home secretary after a spate of disturbing, high-profile cases. But it also shines an awkward spotlight on what happens long after the police, courts and prison service have supposedly done their job.
Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, a friend of Joanna’s family and chair of trustees at the domestic violence charity Refuge, has pointed out that the organisation regularly hears from survivors “who don’t get told when perpetrators are coming out of prison, don’t get told when they get bail” and live in fear of their ex being released. Under Braverman’s reforms, domestic abusers should now be watched more closely; a pilot scheme could see offenders electronically tagged, banned from going near the victim’s home, or made to attend behaviour change programmes. People convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour will be subject to joint police and probation supervision on their release, as physically violent offenders would be. But as Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, has said, it will work only if there’s the money to actually make it happen.
Prisoners freed early on licence are subject to conditions for the rest of what would otherwise have been their sentence, and can be recalled to prison if those conditions are broken; or they can be in theory, at least. In January, an inquiry revealed catastrophic failings in the case of Zara Aleena, a young law graduate from London murdered as she walked home from a night out by a man who had been released on licence only nine days earlier.
Jordan McSweeney had a history of violence towards women, had skipped probation appointments after his release, and had been recalled to prison two days before the attack. But McSweeney, wrongly graded “medium risk” instead of high, remained at large – and free to target at least five women before eventually settling on Zara. In his report, chief inspector of probation Justin Russell noted that the probation staff involved were shouldering unmanageable workloads because of unfilled vacancies, “something we have increasingly seen” in inspections of other local services.
A week earlier, the watchdog had identified failings in the case of Damien Bendall, a former cage fighter with convictions for violence who murdered his pregnant partner and three children while supposedly under supervision by the probation service. His case, this time having been wrongly graded as low risk of harm to partners and children, was one of 10 being juggled by a probation officer who had yet to finish basic training.
In its annual report last year, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation found management of high-risk cases was, thankfully, improving, but the opposite was true for medium-risk ones, which make up the lion’s share of cases – including “tens of thousands of domestic abuse perpetrators” – and account for over half of homicides committed by people on probation. It’s the unglamorous, invisible and often underfunded cog in the justice machine. But without probation, everything else falls apart.
A recent change in the law gave justice secretaries the power to override automatic early release in cases where prisoners are still felt to pose a very high risk of harm, and make them serve the full sentence. But whether those powers are used or not, the vast majority of violent offenders will still be free one day. Society has an obligation to prepare for that moment diligently, giving victims and the wider public the confidence to live with a potentially terrifying prospect.
It’s always a leap of faith when a cell door is unlocked, and we’re all expected just to trust that overstretched prisons have still managed to achieve some kind of rehabilitation, or at least that if there’s any danger of a relapse someone will quickly step in. But without a properly functioning probation service, that leap of faith becomes just too big to make, and confidence in the rest of the system collapses. It shouldn’t be left to frightened individual families, fighting their own lonely battles, to make that point.
This article was amended on 20 March 2023 to clarify that Bendall was graded as low risk specifically in relation to partners and children.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.