Crime Reduction - Helping to Reduce Crime in Your Area

Driving Down Prolific Offending: Police and Probation A Community Partnership

An innovative community outreach partnership was a catalyst for a joint probation and police project in which 84% of the participating prolific offenders are reported not to have re-offended in the first year.

---

This article is an outline of how, from the heart of an urban renewal partnership, community support allowed this crime reduction project to flourish.

Urban Renewal Partnership – reducing crime

Setting the scene for local agencies to all get on-board to tackle the causes of crime, a specially adapted “Big Green Double-Decker Bus” takes a host of services into the former coal-mining communities of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. Drugs, education, health, employment and advice services all contribute to this key community safety initiative which is funded by the Government’s Single Regeneration Budget (SRB).

Managed by probation for the Newcastle-under-Lyme’s Western Urban Villages Community Partnership, the double-decker bus promotes practical security measures. These include improving locks and bolts on vulnerable domestic dwellings, identifying opportunities for offenders on Community Service Orders to carry out crime prevention and environmental improvement tasks and a Community Chest scheme supporting residents’ own suggestions (e.g. illuminating dark alleyways and installing net curtains in vacant houses).

Sharing of local crime intelligence

Because the SRB partnership working proved so successful on the bus, the development of a prolific offenders project was a natural next step; born from the following sources of intelligence being considered by the Crime and Community Safety Topic Group of the Newcastle Western Urban Villages Community Programme:

• Staffordshire Police’s crime pattern analysis and offender profiling

• Staffordshire Probation’s local knowledge of local offenders

• The Topic Group’s identification of local peoples’ safety concerns gained through extensive community consultation

Revealing that 4% of known offenders were committing 40% of detected crime, the SRB partner agencies were faced with a pressing need to substantially reduce the burglaries, thefts and car crime committed on the estates by a relatively small number of offenders. For this group of offenders, any degree of reduction of re-offending could provide a significant pay-off and impact on local crime levels.

A natural logic led the SRB partnership programme to consider adopting a comprehensive 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 in-puts from other partner agencies to support the offenders’ rehabilitation back into the community.

What works? Evidence-based practice It was recognised that any new service development should be informed by evidence-based research. Reporting cuts in house burglaries by one third, a pioneering prolific offending project between police and probation services in Dordrecht, Holland, was set up in 1995 in response to a burglary epidemic along with rising rates of drug addiction and homelessness. The project’s success was partly due to the structural alignment of probation and police services within a single government department, and variations of the original scheme have been replicated throughout the Netherlands. Closer to home a similar probation and police match had recently been established in Burnley, Lancashire, where a pairing of police and probation personnel had adapted the Dordrecht model and combined intensive probation supervision, close case management, and increased police surveillance. The early results of these projects were extremely encouraging, and also confirmed what was already evident to the Newcastle SRB programme - that a successful union of probation and police services relies upon mutual trust and commitment at officer, middle and senior management levels.

Pump priming – Single Regeneration Budget funding

In 1998 Staffordshire Probation and Police were successful in their joint submission for SRB funding, undoubtedly due to the commitment from all partner agencies towards the initiative. Extra funding was essential to kick-start the scheme because, although a small project, the full-time allocation of a Probation Officer and a Detective Constable to work with a small cohort of prolific offenders is time intensive, and hard to sustain from normal resource levels.

The project came on-stream in December 1998, with the probation service acting as the host agency providing office accommodation and covering management and administration costs.

Prime objectives

Are to:

• Monitor offenders in the community and reduce the incidence of crime

• Ensure prompt detection and prosecution if re-offending occurs

• Confront attitudes about offending and victims

• Deal with problems related to offending

• Provide offenders with strategies to live law abiding lives.

Caseloads, eligibility, supervision and monitoring

Working within the SRB programme area of a 14,000 population, the project currently manages a caseload of 22 prolific offenders all with six to twelve previous convictions within the 12 months prior to referral (or their current period of imprisonment). 19 are under supervision in the community and three are being prepared for release from prison.

To be eligible offenders must reside or have committed one or more of their offences in the target neighbourhoods, with at least one of the offences being burglary or other serious indictable offence. Referrals can be made directly from prisons, the police and probation officers, or by self-referral.

All offenders are assessed at an early stage by drug treatment services. 95% of offenders referred have had a heavy drug misuse problem so partnership with statutory and voluntary drug agencies is critical. 17 individuals commenced drug treatment in the first 12 months of the project.

The individual ‘contract’ with the offender requires unscheduled monitoring by the police alongside at least four probation supervision sessions a week, including one home visit. Offenders may also be required to participate in offending behaviour programmes which are run by the probation service with partner agencies and/or Community Service Orders as required by the sentencing court. Not surprisingly the project has attracted considerable interest and support from local magistrates and judges.

Clear vision

The major contributing factor to the success of the Newcastle project is that a clear vision underpinned the initial design stage of how the network of partner agencies would contribute to achieving a reduction in prolific offending rates. Because partners were all ‘on board’, drug dependency services have been committed to providing fast track addiction services; Newcastle College of Further Education helps with basic employment training and educational opportunities; various social and private housing providers are involved; and local employers have offered work opportunities.

Recipe for success

All this co-operation is in respect of a group of individuals that would normally be regarded as extremely difficult to work with on a constructive and socially inclusive basis. But “success” for prolific offender projects can be double-edged. 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, and crimes will have been prevented.

The human angle

In one instance it took just three weeks from one persistent offender’s release from prison for police to arrest him for one house burglary – when previously this man had committed a total of 200 house burglaries in a 12 month period before an arrest

Twice-weekly drug testing demonstrated that one offender with a history of chaotic heroin misuse was free of drugs for 37 weeks.

And after years entrenched in crime, another offender has now held down a full time job for nine months and for the first time spent Christmas with his wife and children rather than in prison.

The scheme has assisted nine individuals – previously living in difficult circumstances - into decent accommodation. All cases have been referred for health and fitness assessment and nine individuals regularly attend fitness programmes.

Savings

But above all else the project is a crime reduction method which can alleviate the misery and fear of crime for frequently victimised people. Additional savings can be had by all, given that the national mean cost of property taken in a dwelling house burglary was £1,416 in 1998 (British Crime Survey). Other costs loaded into the analysis can include the criminal justice overheads of investigating and processing the case.

Current policy context

Flowing logically from the attention given to repeat victims by the police in recent years, the Home Office’s Crime Reduction Programme “Targeted Policing Initiative” is actively promoting the idea. Similar projects are frequently identified by the 300 plus local Crime and Disorder Partnerships in England and Wales established under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

A number of police and probation services, including Lancashire, Merseyside, West Yorkshire, Kent and Staffordshire, are working on developing their own localised approaches. Because these initiatives exemplify the essence of good “case management” they will be an integral feature of the Home Office’s Crime Reduction Programme “What Works/Effective Practice Initiative”.

Summary

Probation and police partnerships in tackling prolific offenders have clearly come of age. As Professor Ken Pease* writes:

“(it) stands alone amongst current penal initiatives in its consistency with the government philosophy on toughness on both crime and the causes of crime. It combines benefits to prolific offenders in help with the problems that sustain them in crime and benefits to the community in ensuring that those who persist in crime despite such help are promptly removed from the community”.

(*Interim Report on the Burnley/Dordrecht Initiative, Chennery, Bromhall, Pease, University of Huddersfield Applied Criminology Group 1999)

It has taken until the turn of the new millennium for these partnerships to arrive, but we are now firmly on route.

If you would like further information about the project please contact: David Walton, Chief Probation Officer, 28, Salter Street, Stafford ST16 2LS. Tel (01785) 223416 Fax: (01785) 223108 Email: staffs.probation@staffordshire.gov.uk David Walton is the Lead Officer for Community Safety for the Association of Chief Officers of Probation. He is also a member of the Government’s newly established National Crime Reduction Task Force.

Last update: 11/09/03