Coroner tells Met and Probation Service to improve

A coroner has told the Metropolitan Police and the Probation Service to improve their services or risk future deaths, after Zara Aleena was raped and murdered in 2022.

Jordan McSweeney was jailed for life at the Old Bailey after attacking 35-year-old Ms Aleena as she walked home from a night out in east London.

Nadia Persaud, area coroner for east London, said in a report there was a lack of “rigour, detail and independence” in the Met investigation as well as low staffing levels within the Probation Service.

The report comes after Ms Aleena’s inquest in June, in which a jury found “the failure of multiple state agencies” contributed to her death.

In the prevention of future deaths report published on Friday, Ms Persaud raised concerns about a “lack of rigour, detail and independence” of a Met police investigation of its own handling of the case.

Ms Persaud said an “independent, rapid investigation” was carried out by the force’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) which reached “clear and valuable findings”.

Despite this, she said, the findings of the DPS investigator “were rejected by more senior officers within the Met”.

“The officers who rejected the findings were not independent.”

The coroner added the probation delivery unit responsible for managing McSweeney had been “understaffed”, with staffing levels of 61% in 2022, and 58% at the time of the inquest in June 2024.

The low staffing levels had a negative impact upon:

• Quality and depth of assessments
• Quality of supervision of junior staff
• Excessively high workloads for probation officers and senior probation officers
• Lack of cover during annual leave for probation officers
• Record keeping

“The inquest heard this is a national problem and there are other probation delivery units with even lower levels of staffing,” Ms Persaud said.

Her report said understanding around risk assessment was “poor” within the service, and “there was a lack of professional curiosity and a lack of sufficient probing into information relevant to risk”.

“A restraining order had been put in place against the offender, but this was not highlighted, as it should have been,” she wrote.

“Key staff involved in assessing and managing the offender were unaware of the restraining order.”

Ms Persaud also raised concerns around possible “societal acceptance” of stalking behaviour after at least two members of the public were followed by McSweeney before he attacked Ms Aleena, but did not report it to emergency services.

“The members of the public appear to have seen the offender and appear to be aware that he was following them,” she said.

“I am concerned that there is a societal acceptance that such conduct does not need to be reported.”

As is routine, copies of the coroner’s report were sent to authorities including the chief probation officer, the justice secretary, the Met commissioner, the head of Redbridge Council and the home secretary.

They must each respond by 20 September outlining what actions they will take to improve.

The report follows the findings of an inquest jury which said Ms Aleena’s death was contributed to “by the failure of multiple state agencies to act in accordance to policies and procedures”.

Failures included not sharing intelligence, not accurately assessing risk of serious harm, and not responding to risk in a sufficient, timely and co-ordinated way.

Damning findings by the chief inspector of probation, published last year, also set out a catalogue of errors by probation officers before McSweeney carried out the attack on Ms Aleena.