A WATCHDOG has found major failings by probation officers in the handling of the case of Zara Aleena’s killer. 

Jordan McSweeney, 29, had been released from jail just nine days before he stalked and killed the law graduate as she walked home from a friend’s house on June 26, 2022, in Ilford, Essex.  

In a damning report, Chief Inspector of Probation Justin Russell highlighted a series of failings that resulted in probation officers wrongly assessing Mr McSweeney’s risk of serious harm to the public as “medium,” instead of “high.”

The 29-year-old was handed a life sentence last month after admitting to the murder and sexual assault of Ms Aleena.  

Although the licence under which he had been released was quickly revoked after he failed to show up to several meetings with probation officers, he was not recalled to prison. 

Mr Russell said if the probation service had correctly assessed Mr McSweeney as a “high-risk” offender, more urgent action would have been taken to recall him to prison.

“The Probation Service failed to do so, and he was free to commit this most heinous crime on an innocent young woman,” the chief inspector said. 

Mr McSweeney had 28 previous convictions for 69 separate offences dating back 17 years including burglary, theft of a vehicle, criminal damage, assaulting police officers and assaulting members of the public while on bail. 

He also had a history of violence towards ex-partners and was handed a restraining order for an offence against a woman in 2021. Mr Russell said the wrong assessment was made because “each of the offences, his behaviours in prison, and his criminal history, had been reviewed in isolation.”

He added: “Prison and probation services didn’t communicate effectively about Mr McSweeney’s risks, leaving the Probation Service with an incomplete picture of someone who was likely to reoffend.”

Similar failings were found in a recent inspection of probation services in London, the report states, in which inspectors determined that 7 per cent of 137 people on probation who were assessed as posing a medium risk of harm should have been classed as high risk. 

Mr Russell added that the failures in the McSweeney case had taken place against a backdrop of “excessive workloads” and staff vacancies. 

Centre for Women's Justice director Harriet Wistrich said urgent action was needed to transform the probation system in response to the findings.

"The criminal justice system is in collapse, women are not being protected from violent men and at least part of the problem is down to chronic underfunding and disastrous attempts to privatise by the government that has left this appalling legacy," she said.

"Dominic Raab, having commissioned this investigation now needs to take urgent action to transform the system."