Police strategy to switch off crime (From Wiltshire Times)

Police strategy to switch off crime

11:00pm Saturday 28th January 2012 in Wiltshire

A NEW way of managing persistent criminals, to help them build more stable lives and reduce crime levels, has been running in Wiltshire for six months.

SWITCH, the Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Targets for Change campaign, involves agencies including the police, proba- tion service, prisons, charities and councils working together to tackle persistent offenders.

Nationally, 10 per cent of criminals commit 60 per cent of all crime and 64 per cent of those released from prison are back behind bars within two years.

SWITCH is based on successful pilots elsewhere in the country, where the re-offending rate has dropped.

Although the scheme has been running in Wiltshire since July, it was only officially unveiled at Melksham Police Station last week.

Diana Fulbrook, the chief executive of Wiltshire Probation Trust and the project leader, said: “It’s been a long time in coming.

“It’s a known fact that a really low number of offenders commit over half of all the crime in this country and therefore there has been a process, nationally, of trying to target that small group.

“We wanted a scheme that spans Swindon and Wiltshire and that allowed for local differences. We’ve been building on local experience; this hasn’t come out of nowhere.”

The scheme, details of which were announced last Thursday, sees a dedicated team working with selected persistent offenders and dealing with them from one office, co-ordinating across several agencies.

The team helps offenders find accommodation and work and arrange benefits, as well as monitoring them closely to ensure they keep to community orders and complete drug rehabilitation programmes, for example.

Those participating in the scheme may also face regular drugs tests.

So far, an 11-strong team of police and probation officers has worked with 98 offenders, from its offices in Swindon, Melksham and Salisbury.

Wiltshire Chief Constable Brian Moore has backed the scheme, saying that it made practical sense.

He said: “I want to see an end to the revolving door of people who are just locked into a state of drug and alcohol dependency and stealing and committing all kinds of crimes, with chaos in their lives. Communities are tired of seeing this.

“Working as single agencies can’t be right and was never right.”

Mr Moore added there was a sound “business case” to the plan.

Each burglary prevented in Wiltshire would save the taxpayer £19,000 on average.