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The way in which offenders are supervised by the Probation Service is determined by the Offender Management model. This is designed to ensure that offenders are managed in a consistent, constructive and coherent way during their entire sentences, whether that is in custody, in the community or contains elements of both.
At every stage of sentence, the same offender manager has responsibility for assessing the risk posed by the offender, planning the content of their supervision to reduce their risk of reoffending and protect the public from harm, ensuring that the sentence plan is implemented and reviewing and evaluating its’ impact.
Offenders may be subject to Community Orders for a maximum of three years. These orders contain one or more of the following requirements that the offender must undertake:
- Unpaid work
- Supervision
- Specified activity (e.g. literacy or numeracy training)
- Prohibited activity (something the offender is not allowed to do)
- Exclusion (an area where the offender is not allowed to go)
- Curfew
- Accredited Programme (offending behaviour groupwork)
- Attendance centre (for young offenders only)
- Drug rehabilitation
- Mental health treatment
- Alcohol treatment
- Residence (the offender must live in a specified place)
Once an offender is sentenced to a community order they are assigned to an offender manager. More serious offenders are assigned to an offender manager who is a qualified Probation Officer. Offenders that are judged to pose a lower risk may be managed by a Probation Services Officer.
The offender meets regularly with their offender manager who will produce a sentence plan. The offender manager co-ordinates the different requirements of the order which may be supervised by other colleagues within the service or by a contracted partner, such as drug treatment providers or electronic tagging organisations.
The offender manager ensures that the offender attends all appointments and fulfils all the requirements. If the offender fails to attend for good reason or to comply with the order, they are returned to Court.
Courts may also sentence offenders to Suspended Sentence Orders. This is generally ordered for offences that the courts considers ‘so serious’ that only prison is appropriate. The offender can be sentenced to custody for between 28-51 weeks. However, this can then be suspended for a period of between 6 and 24 months during which the offender is supervised by the probation service and is subject to requirements as per the community order.
If the offender re-offends or breaches the order they can go straight to prison.
When offenders are sentenced to Custody their Offender Manager maintains contact with them and, in some cases, attends the Sentence Planning meetings in the prison to decide on the type of work to address their offending behaviour that the offender should undertake in the prison. For those cases the prison will allocate an Offender Supervisor who will ensure that the objectives in the Sentence Plan are implemented.
Two new sentences have been introduced in the last few years. These are:-
- Indeterminate Public Protection Sentence . This is for serious offences that carry a sentence of ten years or more. The court sets a tariff that will be served and release is controlled by the Parole Board based on the assessment of risk posed by the offender. On release, the offender is supervised by the probation service for a minimum of ten years. Life sentences can still be imposed for relevant offences such as murder or rape.
- Extended Public Protection Sentence. This can be imposed for serious offences that carry a sentence of less than ten years. A total sentence will be imposed of which the time spent in custody will be at least 12 months. Release will take place during the second half of the custodial element at the discretion of the Parole Board. There will then follow a period on licence of up to five years (for violent offences) or eight years (for sexual offences). Conditions may be attached to the licence.
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