Crime Reduction Partnerships
Prolific Offenders Project
Project description
This community-based initiative targets persistent offenders, who frequently have drug problems and commit crime to support their drug habit.
After careful selection, offenders are offered a place on the programme for between 6-12 months. During this time they receive fast access to services and support from local agencies and organisations. Alongside the support, swift action and penalties are imposed for any non-attendance or non-compliance with the programme.
Support is offered in the form of increased contact meetings with probation, drug rehabilitation and addiction counselling; help in finding appropriate accommodation; careers advice and training; and help in developing strategies to live crime free lives.
Project objectives
Monitor offenders in the community and reduce the incidence of crime.
Confront attitudes about offending and victims.
Deal with problems related to offending.
Provide offenders with strategies to live law abiding lives.
Ensure prompt detection and prosecution if re-offending occurs.
Project location
The coal-mining housing estates of Newcastle-under-Lyme.
All offenders on the project must live in, or have committed crimes in, the localities covered by the two Single Regeneration Budget programmes.
Project outline
Agencies referring offenders to the project complete a standard risk matrix to most effectively target resources. The matrix enables agencies to identify those prolific offenders who are most likely to benefit from the project.
Participants agree to unscheduled monitoring by the police before they come onto the project. Participants have supervision contact with the probation officer up to four sessions a week, including a home visit (statutory minimum requirements would be once a week).
To become drug free and maintain some stability, major changes are needed relating to a drug user’s lifestyle such as developing support networks, developing interests and also diminishing influences through a change in peer networks.
Within 24 hours of joining the project, an NHS specialist drugs misuse nurse assesses participants. Failure to attend follow-up appointments for treatment is breachable and can lead to participants being ejected from the scheme. Failure to attend appointments made at the local college for training schemes, exercise classes at the leisure centre or participation in projects such as gardening/allotment work, is also breachable.
Many of the offenders have been unemployed for long periods of time and are low achievers lacking in confidence. So initial work is needed before they become ‘job ready’ and the project’s close relationship with Newcastle College helps facilitate this.
Partners include:
Combined Healthcare NHS Trust’s Community Addiction Unit - provides treatment and referral for rehabilitation for drug/alcohol dependency.
Druglink and Staffordshire Alcohol Advisory Service - provides support to overcome addictions.
Newcastle Borough Council - provides assistance with accessing accommodation, sport and leisure facilities, constructive use of time packages and derelict allotment sites for offenders to cultivate.
Beth Johnson Housing Association - provides help with accommodation.
Newcastle College - provides access to education and training skills, help with basic skills, particularly access to IT and computer training and help with basic employment training and educational opportunities.
Staffordshire Careers, Breakthrough Employment, New Deal Work Experience Centre and Princes Trust - provide advice about education and training opportunities, special employment schemes, Job Search, CV preparation and interview techniques.
This multi-agency approach also means that work to ensure that offenders are able to make and maintain progress towards a crime-free lifestyle can be shared and supported. No one agency has to dedicate a disproportionate amount of resources to the project.
1. Prevention of everyday crime
The Prolific Offenders Project was devised as a result of Newcastle Western Urban Crime & Community Safety Topic Group (part of the Villages Community Partnership) following extensive community consultation. The consultation identified local people’s safety concerns particularly intimidation, anti-social behaviour, drug/gang culture, vandalism, robbery and young people ‘hanging around’.
Community concerns were supported by Staffordshire Police’s crime pattern analysis and offender profiling systems. These showed the estate areas experienced significantly more than average offences of violence, household burglary and malicious damage/arson. Detection rates for the above were all significantly below regional averages.
The project targets repeat and serious offenders. All of the offenders will have committed six or more crimes in a 12-month period (one of which must be a serious indictable offence) before coming onto the project. They will all be at high risk of committing more crimes.
Many participants are accustomed to prison life and being seen as a ‘failure’ in rehabilitative terms. More than 95% will have a serious drug misuse problem e.g. heroin/cocaine, so their offences are mostly funding their habit.
One of the participants had previously committed 155 offences and had 25 previous convictions; another had 100 offences and 17 previous convictions; and another had committed 8 offences and with 3 convictions.
As research indicated, a small percentage of known offenders were committing a high amount of the detected crime, so the local partners considered how they could reduce the re-offending rates for this group of offenders. If they could achieve such a reduction it would obviously have a significant impact on local crime levels. The project developed adopted a comprehensive and intensive method in tackling prolific offending. Providing supervision and surveillance, police and probation officers could work together through all stages of the offenders’ crime careers as well as co-ordinating service inputs from other partner agencies to support the offenders’ rehabilitation back into the community.
2. Community-based and partnership solution
It was agreed that for the programme to be successful a Probation Officer and a Detective Constable should be allocated full time to work with a small cohort of prolific offenders. This would normally be hard to sustain from existing resource levels. However, funding was secured in November 1998 from two SRBs (Single Regeneration Budgets) and Staffordshire Police. The probation service acted as the host agency, providing office accommodation and covering management and administration costs; it also commissioned the evaluation project from the Department of Criminology, Keele University.
The partnership has developed specially agreed working and information sharing arrangements with the local agencies involved, who have also committed specialist staff and resources to the programme. They provide a range of services including treatment for drug & alcohol problems, assistance with accommodation, advice about education & training, and opportunities for constructive leisure time activities.
“The multi-agency partnerships which have formed the basis of the project have demonstrated that such work is both possible and effective in preventing crime.” Keele University Evaluation.
3. Results
Independent evaluation over 30 months by criminologists from Keele University (May 2001) shows that the offenders on the project at the time of sample were on average 53% less likely to be re-convicted when compared to a similar group not on the scheme.
Figures since May 2001 show that a total of 34 offenders have been on the project. Of these, 17 (57%) have been crime free or have shown a very marked reduction in their offending.
All the individuals who have re-offended have been taken back to court and, because their offending was less serious and less frequent, they were allowed to continue under community supervision.
9 (30%) offenders re-offended and the courts decided to imprison them again. The police and probation services believe that these individuals were arrested and returned to custody faster than might previously been the case. The evaluation team found two of those returned to prison acknowledged personal responsibility for their mistakes and their failure to take up the support on offer.
The research team from Keele University stress that the strong multi-agency working arrangements developed has been a very strong factor in the success of the project. Importantly the project has resulted in a far greater level of intelligence sharing between the police and probation services, and other agencies.
Offenders can opt for positive change if they are prepared to make the commitment and stop offending. If not, they run the risk of detection at a much earlier stage than they have previously experienced. Either way crimes are prevented.
“Participants were overwhelmingly positive about their experiences on the project” Keele University’s research report, evaluating the project.
Cost benefits
A conservative analysis by the probation service in August 2001 shows that approximately 3,925 crimes have been prevented, saving an estimated £5.5 million in prevented crimes.
(The total funding contribution from each of the two SRB partnerships to pump-prime the project from November 1998 until March 2001 was £86,000 (£43,000 each). This was calculated by examining the previous frequency of offending by each participant prior to their involvement with the project, and comparing these to the rates since participation.)
4. Replication and Sustainability
Due to its proven success, the Newcastle-under-Lyme project was incorporated into mainstream police and probation funding in April 2001 with extra probation staffing - thus allowing the scheme to extend into additional neighbourhoods. There has also been an increased amount of mainstream NHS resources made available for drug misuse assessment and treatment services.
The partnership project has acted as an example of good practice across the country in an area of work with persistent offenders where previously it was considered that ‘nothing worked’.
Information about the project has been disseminated nationally via specialist professional media outlets and the development of internet links.
Project staff regularly host visits from other police and probation services, and provide support and advice to those services setting up similar schemes. Project staff and management also offer on-going advice to the Home Office regarding the national development of such schemes. They have been instrumental in setting up and developing a National Prolific Offenders Support Network for practitioners.
Keele University’s research report recommends that: “Similar projects should be encouraged elsewhere so that lessons learnt from this project in Newcastle-under-Lyme can be applied and the results tested in different geographical areas.”
A second Prolific Offenders Project was set up in September 2000 in Stoke-on-Trent, funded by the Targeted Policing Initiative, and evaluated by Keele University. Police and probation services are now developing plans for similar projects in other parts of Staffordshire.
European Crime Prevention Award 2001 Jury Assessment
Whoever successfully takes care of the small group of multiple offenders is making society considerably safer in one step. In the jury’s opinion that is quite an achievement. In Newcastle-under-Lyme multiple offenders are given help in beating their addiction, finding accommodation, finding suitable things to do in their free time, following education and training sessions, preparing for job applications, and obtaining work. Central to the project is the co-operation between a large number of different authorities, the exchange of information and rapid access to the help available. This co-operation is the key to the success of this project which is more than worthy of imitation.
Last update: Wednesday, August 08, 2007