Police and probation service were warned in 2011 that Joseph McCann posed risk of sexual offending before he was freed from jail and went on UK rape rampage, damning report reveals
Experts warned that Britain’s worst sex offender Joseph McCann should be kept in prison before his release and 37-rape rampage including one attack on a 11-year-old boy, it was revealed today.
Probation staff expressed first expressed concern about the danger of letting McCann back on the streets in 2011 – eight years before his fortnight of abuse last year.
There was a ‘repeated failure’ by probation officers to recall the serial rapist despite concerns being raised by other professionals, a Ministry of Justice report published today said.
McCann had been freed despite being subject to an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence for a burglary armed with a knife in 2008.
He was in and out of jail until he was released after serving half of his three-year prison sentence for burglary in February 2019 – without having to face a parole board hearing despite his IPP status.
Evil sex beast Joseph McCann (left) launched a two-week rape-and-kidnap rampage after he was left without ‘the siblings who grounded him’. His older brother Sean, 32, (right) killed himself in Peterborough prison in 2016 while serving a two-year sentence for assault
Joseph McCann (pictured on CCTV) went on a two-week raping spree in 2019 – after being released from prison in error eight weeks earlier
His 2019 crimes horrified Britain – but it has since emerged that there were at least eight chances to keep him in jail over fears he would commit sexual offences
Eight weeks later he launched a two-week rape-and-kidnap rampage where he abducted, raped and assaulted 11 victims aged between 11 and 71 in Watford, and the North West.
Today’s MoJ report said: ‘The most significant practice failure was the repeated failure to recall Joseph McCann or to reflect critically on earlier decisions not to recall him, in the face of both court and prison staff communicating their concern’.
One of his victims told The Sun today: ‘This coward should not have even been walking the streets at the time these offences happened, but was only doing so as a result of an outrageous and avoidable failure in the justice system.’
McCann was handed 33 life sentences and jailed for a minimum term of 30 years in December for the string of attacks on 11 women and children.
Described by his sentencing judge as a “classic psychopath”, the 34-year-old convicted burglar had been freed after a probation service error two months before he embarked on the cocaine and vodka-fuelled rampage.
A review carried out by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and published on Thursday said: “The most significant practice failing was the repeated failure to recall Joseph McCann or to reflect critically on earlier decisions not to recall him, in the face of both court and prison staff communicating their concerns.
“From the point where McCann was arrested for burglary in 2017 to the point of his release, there were eight occasions where recall was considered or the recall decision was questioned.
“These all represented opportunities to recall.
“If the probation service had recalled McCann he would not have been released until the Parole Board was satisfied his release could be managed in the community.”
The findings have prompted the department to ask chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, to carry out an independent review of the National Probation Service’s management of McCann and how the process of recalling offenders to prison is working.
Probation officers must be ‘more inquisitive’ instead of taking criminals who claim they’ve gone straight at ‘face value’, a report warned in January.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation says too many staff are not investigating what is going on ‘behind the scenes’ when they meet offenders.
The warning follows the case of London Bridge attacker Usman Khan, who persuaded officials he was not a risk before stabbing two people to death in November. HMIP found repeated examples across England and Wales of probation officers failing to ask sufficiently thorough questions.
HM Chief Inspector of Probation Justin Russell also raised the prospect of an internal review into the case of Joseph McCann, who committed a string of sex attacks on women and children after being released from jail in error.
The probation service does not usually publish the results of such investigations, but Mr Russell said there was a ‘strong argument there is a public interest’ to do so in McCann’s case.
‘We need staff to demonstrate a more inquisitive approach rather than taking things on face value,’ a senior probation inspector warns in his report. ‘[Staff] should take a more proactive approach to investigate what’s going on behind the scenes.’