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THE latest revelations about the weaknesses in London Probation and its failure to supervise offenders adequately - including Dano Sonnex - have led to a political blame game.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw has pinned responsibility on the service's senior managers, accusing them of wasting increased resources, ignoring "obvious" warning signs and failing to check on workloads of junior staff.
Union leaders have taken a different stance and have blamed London's long-standing problems, which also contributed to the 2004 killing of City financier John Monckton by two freed offenders, on a severe lack of funding from Whitehall.
Meanwhile the Tories claim "serial ministerial mismanagement" and "bloated bureaucracy" mean the Government is responsible.
As ever, the truth appears to lie somewhere in the middle. What is clear is that London Probation has received more money recently with ministers pointing to a 16.5 per cent increase over the past two years that has taken its annual budget to £154million - of which £3.5million was left unspent last year.
What also seems to be incontrovertible is that some of this money has been misdirected. Since the New Cross murders last year, an extra 60 front line probation staff have been recruited in the capital with a further 80 appointments planned, all using money saved by cutting spending at London Probation's headquarters. Such waste explains why front line staff - as the probation union NAPO has complained repeatedly - have been overstretched with often dozens, if not hundreds of cases, on the books of each individual officer.
At the same time, serious questions must be asked about the role of the Ministry of Justice and of the National Offender Management Service, which was set up by ministers to oversee the prison and probation service.
Given London Probation's record of problems, which have been highlighted in several official reports covering a period dating back to the murder of Mr Monckton and before, far greater scrutiny of the service should have been conducted from Whitehall.
So while the flaws in London Probation which have emerged once again in the wake of the New Cross murders are "frankly disappointing" - as the latest official study has found - the reality is that they should have been identified far sooner and should not have come as such a shock to ministers.
