Whistleblowers in the Justice Department say they have been pushed them to breaking point

Justice officers have revealed how criminals serving their sentences in the community are not being properly monitored, including one shocking case where an offender killed a man.

One whistleblower says job cuts mean none of the high-risk criminals are getting the supervision they actually need. Picture: iStock

A vicious thug serving a community sentence after being jailed for serious crimes was not being properly monitored when he killed a man, whistleblowers claim.

Officers tasked with managing criminals serving their sentences in the community say they are losing track of many of them because their caseloads have recently doubled to as many as 50 per worker.

Registered sex offenders serving community correction orders will also “no longer be required to attend appointments” and “will not be supervised” under new arrange­ments, workers claim.

The whistleblowers say mass job cuts in the Justice Department and an internal reshuffle have pushed them to breaking point.

Justice officers say they are losing track of many criminals because of higher caseloads. Picture: iStock

One offender, they said, was on a community correction order after completing a jail term for an aggravated burglary and breaching multiple family violence orders, the court having heard he’d threatened his younger brother and sister, went on a violent rampage that left his ex-girlfriend fearing for her life and was a “menace to society”.

And in recent months the thug killed a young man and was charged with murder, a whistleblower revealing while he had been ordered to report to a corrections office, it was hard for overworked staff to track offenders like this.

A worker said some staff had to juggle 50 offenders at once – double the 25 load that was ­already stretching the workforce before job cuts and a structure review late last year.

Workers are required to check in with their assigned offenders weekly, ensuring they attend drug treatment programs, drug testing and wellbeing checks.

But with so many cases to juggle, that has been pushed back to almost once a month.

“We’re working at probably 30 per cent less staff than we had prior to the reforms and since then all of our fixed-term staff have left,” the worker said.

“So now the caseloads of case managers have gone from around the 25s to around the 50s – they’re almost double. There is completely no oversight in terms of what some of these high-risk guys (criminals) are doing.

“None of these guys are getting the supervision they actually need.”

The Herald Sun in October revealed fears for community safety after 280 public servants were shown the door or redeployed within.

The reshuffle led to roles being combined internally, which is understood to be a driving factor in an increase in staff taking stress leave.

The whistleblower said community safety would be put at further risk as many new staff were not trained properly.

“People who were being seen weekly now have to be pushed out to be seen monthly, because there’s no capacity to see these people regularly,” he said.

“These people aren’t being supervised and monitored ­effectively, and moving forward it’s going to be worse.

“A lot of the newer staff aren’t even trained properly because we’ve had a huge exodus of staff on fixed terms.

“So we’ve got staff who are managing all these guys who haven’t gone through the full training process, and they don’t have the skills to manage these people.

“We can’t do this anymore, there’s people literally slipping through the gaps.”

Opposition corrections spokesman Brad Battin said cutting crucial frontline jobs was the result of serious “financial mismanagement” by the state government.

A Department of Justice spokesman was adamant the worst offenders were supervised by the best workers.

“We take the welfare of our community corrections officers very seriously and we continue to work closely with them to help them keep the community safe,” he said.

“There are no net job losses within Community Correctional Services.

“Changes to the operating model will ensure we have the resources where we need them across Victoria to keep the community safe, with high-risk offenders supervised by the most experienced staff.”