Taxi Driver Online

Birmingham Post

November 8, 2006, Wednesday

HEADLINE: POLITICS: Probation Service let us down, says mum

The widow of a murdered taxi driver said yesterday that the Probation Service had "utterly failed" her family after a violent criminal released early from prison was left free to kill.

Mother-of-two Kelly Win-stone, 28, from Longwell Green, Bristol, said mistakes by probation officers had cost her husband Colin his life.

Home Secretary John Reid has ordered an urgent review of procedures at two bail hostels in the city after an undercover BBC documentary revealed a series of flaws in the system.

The BBC's Panorama investigation filmed a convicted paedophile and child killer staying at the same premises in Bristol befriending children. Meanwhile, another paedophile was seen taking pictures in a busy shopping centre and loitering around public toilets.

One of the most damaging allegations, however, centres on the supervision of Davidson Charles, a career criminal who went on to murder Colin Win-stone just weeks after being released from prison. Charles (41) had been staying at a bail hostel in Brig-stocke Road, Bristol, when he stabbed the popular cabbie through the heart in a bungled robbery in January last year.

Undercover Panorama reporters recorded staff at the hostel claiming that they warned the Probation Service about him re-offending, but nothing was done. The programme claimed Charles was supposed to be under monitoring and supervision at the hostel when he carried out the murder. He was later jailed for life.

Mrs Winstone, who lives with her two children, Grace, five, and Kieran, eight, said: "They made mistakes and it cost a life. I've lost my husband and the children have lost their father."

Another resident of the same hostel, a paedophile convicted of killing a child, was filmed by Panorama repeatedly returning to flats where he had befriended a group of mothers and their children. Programme makers said they called the police about his activities, but the Probation Service was not informed.

Mr Reid said: "I have asked Andrew Bridges, the Chief Inspector of Probation, to review whether there is a case for an investigation of the management and operation of the approved premises by the programme."

Harry Fletcher, general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo), said it could not offer 24-hour surveillance of those offenders considered to be dangerous.
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