Anti social behaviour

The Prolific & Priority Offenders Scheme

It is estimated that out of a million active offenders, 100,000 offenders have 3 or more convictions and are responsible for half of all crime. The active offender population is not static, 20,000 individuals leave this pool every year and are replaced by another 20,000 offenders. The most active 5,000 of this group are estimated to be responsible for one in ten offences and on 30th March 2004, the Prime Minister announced an end to end strategy to address this group of offenders.

The strategy has 3 complementary parts:

Prevent and Deter - to stop people (overwhelmingly young people) engaging in offending behaviours and graduating into prolific offenders;
Catch and Convict - actively tackling those who are already prolific offenders; and
Rehabilitate and Resettle - working with identified prolific offenders to stop their offending by offering a range of supportive interventions. Offenders will be offered the opportunity for rehabilitation or face a very swift return to the courts.

The new strategy builds on the work done under the existing persistent offender scheme and will replace it. The new strategy allows local areas to identify and select offenders using specific selection criteria.

The new strategy will be Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership (CDRP) led, with schemes set up to cover every CDRP in the country. The emphasis will be on a multi-agency approach towards tackling the problem, with Police, CPS, Prisons and Probation working together, with LCJB coordination, to effectively catch, convict, monitor and manage these offenders in the community or custody and work towards rehabilitating them.