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The Intensive Control and Change Programme pilots: A study of implementation in the first year
ICCP was an intensive community sentence designed as a direct alternative to custody for 18- to 20-year-old offenders. It provided the following combination of interventions:
25 hours of intervention per week for first three months, reduced to 12 hours per week for second three-month period
higher levels of control than other community sentences via a mandatory curfew with electronic monitoring
higher levels of intervention than other community sentences provided through 5 core programmes:
offender supervision
offending behaviour programmes
community punishment
education, training and employment (ETE) interventions
mentoring
increased partnership work with agencies such as JobCentre Plus, the police, mentoring providers and the Connexions service.
Title: The Intensive Control and Change Programme pilots: A study of implementation in the first year
Authors: Sarah Partridge, Jessica Harris, Mark Abram and Angie Scholes
Series: Home Office On-line Report 48/05
Date published: November 2005
Number of pages: 64
Availability: Download full report 
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Characteristics of ICCP offenders
Young adult offenders (aged 18 to 20) generally have a greater needs than their adult counterparts in both community sentence and custodial populations. This was reflected in the proportion of ICCP participants with specific needs
Needs | Proportion requiring assistance |
|---|---|
Education, training and employment (ETE) | 77% |
Accommodation | 49% |
Alcohol misuse | 46% |
Writing | 37% |
Reading | 32% |
Drug misuse | 29% |
Numeracy | 21% |
Offenders who had some or all of the following characteristics were selected to take part in the pilot:
white and male (90% and 93% respectively)
principal offences mainly acquisitive and driving offences (such as car theft and driving while disqualified)
extensive criminal history (an average of 27 previous convictions)
a medium to high risk of reoffending according to OGRS assessments
Delivery of ICCP: Models and issues
The experiences of running the order were similar across delivery models, despite the pilot probation areas running ICCP in different ways. Key findings were:
ICCP was delivered according to three delivery models:
dedicated ICCP delivery teams
generic community supervision teams
'other models' including partnerships and teams that managed other intensive interventions, e.g. Drug Testing & Treatment Order (DTTO).
Probation areas experienced difficulty in building up the required hours at the beginning of an order and also struggled to reach the target hours by the end of the order.
Sequencing of the order was difficult and offenders often had to wait for a programme or found one element of ICCP clashed with another.
There was evidence of tailoring orders to offenders in terms of their needs.
Probation staff reported that some offenders had difficulties keeping to appointments, attending on time and following a structured routine.
Probation staff had reservations about whether the order met the needs of the small number of ICCP offenders who were female or from black and other ethnic minority groups.
In terms of partnership working, initial difficulties were experienced but most issues could be resolved through contact with partners, improved communication, information sharing via formal protocols and a joint understanding of what was required between probation and partners.
Delivering a mix of control and change
ICCP aimed to deliver both elements of control (e.g. curfew, tagging and community punishment) and change (e.g. interventions such as offending behaviour programmes). The main findings were:
ICCP orders delivered a mixture of change and control, as intended by the design of the order.
The majority of offenders were sentenced to ICCP for 10 to 12 months.
Most offenders were required to undertake an average of 92 hours of community punishment during their sentence.
Offenders were curfewed (with a tag) for an average of 11 hours per night and approximately one-third received curfews lasting 180 days (six months).
Two-thirds of offenders saw a mentor as part of their order.
91% of offenders were required to attend the Think First cognitive skills programme.
Areas successfully linked up with a range of statutory and non-statutory organisations to provide education, training and employment (ETE), offender behaviour programmes, mentoring support, community punishment and to monitor adherence to the curfew.
Areas found it a logistical challenge to provide interventions tailored to offenders' priority needs during the first few weeks of the order. Consequently, many areas focused on initially delivering the control elements such as community punishment and the tag which could be set up quickly.
Offenders' views of ICCP
30 offenders commented on a number of aspects of the order when interviewed:
Some struggled with the concept of providing community service for free and also found the work monotonous; they wanted skills which would help them find jobs in the future.
The curfew posed challenges and benefits - it restricted offenders' liberty by interrupting their opportunity to offend and enabled them to separate themselves from criminal peers, but the sacrifice of missing out on social events was a challenge.
In some cases the authority tailored the programme to meet individual offender needs, e.g. some tagged offenders were sentenced to curfew hours to fit around shift work and other responsibilities.
Some offenders said that they thought that ICCP was harder than prison.
Some offenders struggled to engage with the structure, format and routine of offender behaviour programmes. Where programmes clearly matched offender needs, offenders reported a benefit, e.g. programmes to address substance misuse.
Staff motivation, encouragement and support were seen as crucial to the delivery of ICCP to establish a routine in offenders' lives.
Offenders welcomed the provision of intensive contact with probation, timetables and close communication with families and partners.
While some offenders were initially wary about the motivation of volunteer mentors, many found their input useful.
Compliance and enforcement
The findings relating to the number and proportions of offenders who complied or breached are limited by the fact that just under half of the sample (48%) were still continuing on their orders at the end of the evaluation period.
The average length of time to breach was 25 days and for revocation it was 53 days.
Offenders managed within the generic community supervision teams were significantly more likely to breach than offenders managed within other delivery structures.
Those offenders with fewer previous convictions were significantly less likely to breach their order. Mentoring may play a significant role in reducing breach rates.
Impact on custody rates
Court data in the 11 pilot sites were analysed to see if there had been a reduction in the use of short-term custody (sentences of 12 months or less). A reduction in of 15% in ICCP areas was mirrored in non-ICCP areas where custody use dropped by an average of 9%. This difference was not statistically significant. Consequently, it is not possible to be certain that the difference between pilot areas compared with other areas was not due to chance.
Sentencers' views of ICCP
Sentencers' views were sought from magistrates, Justices' Clerks, and Crown. Results were as follows:
Only relatively few magistrates and Judges had used ICCP and thus, as a group, had limited first-hand experience of the order.
Respondents thought that ICCP was a good alternative to custody for young offenders especially those with chaotic lifestyles.
Judges considered ICCP suitable for persistent offenders while others maintained that it would only work for less serious offenders with less established criminal histories.
Judges and magistrates were clear that ICCP should not be an option for sex offenders or violent offenders.
Many Judges did not think ICCP orders were relevant to Crown Court cases.
The mentoring scheme was praised highly by Judges and magistrates while views on tagging were mixed.
Judges, in particular, voiced the desire for feedback on how offenders had fared on orders that they had passed.
Judges firmly believed that in order for ICCP to work, it needed to be properly resourced and implemented; some raising concerns that the need for inter-agency co-operation might be an obstacle in some areas.
Suggestions for change included a recommendation from Judges that offenders with anticipated sentences of up to two years should be eligible thus making ICCP available for a greater range of offenders.
Conclusions
The development of tough, credible and effective community sentences is an important part of the Government's strategy for the correctional services. To this end, programmes such as ICCP for young adults and the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance programme (ISSP) for juveniles were introduced by the National Probation Service (NPD) and Youth Justice Board (YJB) respectively to offer high levels of control and intensive interventions for offenders with medium to high needs and risk of reoffending.
Although ICCP and other types of community sentence have now been replaced by the generic community sentence from April 2005, the lessons from the ICCP evaluation may be transferable to this new sentencing option with its menu of interventions. While findings from this report are tentative rather than definitive, it provides some indication about best practice when delivering multi-mode interventions to this group of offenders.
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Last update: Wednesday, September 17, 2008