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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 diverse needs of offenders, while balancing the protection of the public.
Various factors influence whether an offender will commit crime – their own attitudes and behaviour towards society; poor literacy or numeracy; unemployment; lack of accommodation; dependence on drugs or alcohol, and mental and physical health.
Interventions, many linked with the sentence requirements imposed by courts, aim to address these and prevent offenders re-offending.
Humberside Probation Trust provides a variety of interventions through trained, qualified staff or contracted specialist partners.
Interventions fit into several categories.
- Accredited Programmes. These programmes, trialled and accredited by the National Offender Management Service, aim to change the behaviour and attitudes of offenders. They include specialised group or one-to-one work addressing sex offending, domestic abuse, drugs misuse, anger management, drink violence, drink driving and racially motivated crime.
- 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.
- Alcohol treatment. Alcohol is often a significant factor in violent crime and public disorder. We are committed to addressing this issue through agreed partnership working, joint commissioning of appropriate 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.
- Skills for Life. This 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.
- 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.
- Accommodation. When necessary, we try to arrange accommodation for offenders through our contacts with social housing and local authority commissioning bodies for supporting people.
- 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.
A demanding sentence that ensures offenders give something back to society, Community Payback is rigorously enforced – if an offender fails to carry out the work, they are returned to court so their sentence can be reviewed.
Individual members of the public, clubs, community groups, faith groups and voluntary organisations can suggest projects to be considered for Community Payback by filling in the form on here.
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