Protecting the public from potentially dangerous offenders

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Protecting the public is a statutory aim of the National Probation Service.  Rehabilitation of offenders is the best guarantee of long term public protection.  However, it is not always possible and to achieve an acceptable level of public protection a number of different things need to happen. 

Our greatest concerns will always be around potentially high risk sexual and violent offenders and our resources will always be applied where the risk appears to be the greatest.

Probation, the Prison Service and police all work closely to manage offenders on their release from prison and when they are in the community.  Arrangements in each probation and police area ensure that specialist panels carefully and regularly assess individual offenders and exchange and use information to combine supervision and surveillance. 

Stringent court orders can be applied to restrict behaviour and organisations, groups and individuals, like employers or landlords, are often notified of a specific individual offender's past.  (For more details, see the Mappa report for your local area.)

The NPS implements a range of treatment programmes which have been 'tried and tested' at national level. For sex offenders, there are three independently accredited programmes, which involve intensive, long-term group work.  These programmes are not suitable for everyone, in which case, offenders will undergo individual programmes.

The key aims and brief examples of the ways in which we attempt to achieve them in all programmes of work with sex offenders are listed below:

• For the offender to accept full responsibility for his offending.
  
• Detailed sessions examine what the offender did to create the opportunity to offend and what he can do in the future to avoid offending.
  
• Relapse prevention - recognition of high-risk situations.  The first steps towards committing sexual assaults on children are likely to have arisen from offenders discovering that dwelling on thoughts of sex with children makes them feel better when they feel depressed, threatened, angry, sad or helpless.  Offenders report feeling in control, powerful and positive during sexual offending behaviour.
  
• Raise awareness of the effects of sexual abuse on victims. While they are offending, sex offenders use 'thinking errors' to psychologically con themselves that their behaviour is acceptable.
  
• Understanding past patterns of thinking, feeling and behaviour.

These programmes do not work for everyone, but when they are properly targeted they reduce reconviction rates (our best measure of re-offending rates) by up to a third.

The greatest risk from violence or sexually violent behaviour is from people known and often trusted by the victim. Organisations such as the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and the NSPCC can provide you with more information.