Interventions

Rehabilitative Services

Interventions are about providing rehabilitative services that are proven to have an impact on factors associated with offending. They involve direct face to face contact through a variety of different approaches that are responsive to the needs of individual offenders, whilst balancing protection of the public.

Various factors influence whether an offender will commit crime and their own attitudes and behaviour towards society:

  • Poor literacy or numeracy
  • Unemployment
  • Lack of accommodation
  • Dependence on drugs or alcohol
  • Mental and physical health

Completion of interventions, many of which are given by the courts or as part of licence conditions on release from prison, aim to address these factors and prevent offenders re-offending. Humberside Probation Trust provides a variety of interventions through trained, qualified staff or contracted specialist partners.

Programmes

Programmes are specially designed courses to address attitudes and patterns of behaviour that contribute to offending. They are carefully structured to challenge offenders in their thinking and allow them to:

  • Take responsibility for their actions.
  • Think rationally about the situations they face in their everyday life.
  • Learn new ways of coping and responding without offending.
  • Manage their behaviour responsibly.
  • Make choices that will enable them to move away from an offending lifestyle.

Each offender has an Offender Manager who will support them whilst undertaking the programme. Offenders must attend all sessions. Unacceptable absences may result in the offender being returned to court or prison.

For more information about the programmes currently being delivered by Humberside Probation Trust, please see the Programmes Page.

Drugs and Alcohol Interventions

  • Drugs misuse. Our drug rehabilitation teams work in partnership with specialist agencies to ensure offenders subject to a drugs requirement undergo treatment, testing and monitoring. The aim of this collaborative approach is to work with service users to achieve a substance free lifestyle which in turn reduces reoffending.
  • Alcohol treatment. Alcohol is often a significant factor in violent crime and public disorder. We are committed to addressing this issue through partnership working, commissioning of specialist services and the delivery of a range of effective interventions. Humberside Probation Trust’s Alcohol Strategy has been identified as best practice by the Department of Health National Alcohol Support Team and mirrors the Government’s current focus on alcohol misuse as a factor in offending behaviour and community health. In recent years we have developed in-house provision to screen all offenders, access to Brief advice interventions and Alcohol Activity Programme Requirements.

Community Payback

Probably the best known intervention provided by probation because it involves offenders working in the local community to make amends for the crimes they have committed.

Depending upon the seriousness of their offences, offenders can be sentenced to between 40 and 300 hours of Community Payback, expected to average six hours minimum each week. About 160,000 hours of Community Payback is completed in the Humberside area each year – equal to just under £1 million worth of work carried out to the benefit of local communities.

For more information about the Community Payback in the Humberside area, or to suggest a project, please see the Community Payback page.

Skills for Life

Skills for Life involves education courses, open to all offenders under supervision, through which they can improve their basic literacy/numeracy – and remove a possible ‘block’ to employment. Courses are delivered by local colleges or adult education services. On ending their sentence, many offenders continue their further education and gain qualifications.

Employment

We contract a national offender rehabilitation charity to provide employment advice and guidance. Help ranges from opening a bank account to developing motivation and searching for jobs. Through the Job Centre and other providers, offenders who have completed a set number of educational sessions, or who have a definite job offer, can apply for courses leading to vocational qualifications – about 40% of offenders who attend this training find employment.

Accommodation

When necessary, we try to arrange accommodation for offenders through our contacts with social housing and local authority commissioning bodies for supporting people.

Restrictions on Liberty

A curfew, sometimes known as an electronic tag, means that an offender has to be at a given address (usually their home address) between specified times. Curfews restrictions are arranged through G4S and may be given as part of a Community Sentence or as a licence condition when someone is released form prison. A curfew can also be added to community sentence if the offender breaches other requirements of their Order.

Often a curfew is imposed between the hours of 7pm to 7am, but this can be made more flexible to suit the requirements of the court. Other examples of curfew arrangements may be just at weekends or for the nights before the offender has their probation appointment. If an offender with an electronic tag leaves the given address during the curfew period then G4S will be alerted to this and undertake a home visit. They inform the Offender Manager of any breaches of the curfew which could lead to a return to court for the offender and a more onerous sentence being imposed.

Approved Premises (hostels)

Humberside Probation Trust manages two approved premises located in Hull and Scunthorpe. They offer a level of contact, support and supervision that exists nowhere else in the probation organisation. Residents are seen on a daily basis and staff become involved in their lives to a very high degree giving advice, offering support, exercising control and liaising with the rest of the Trust and a wide range of agencies.