Inspection of Integrated Offender Management; Children in custody: An analysis of 12–18-year-olds’ perceptions of their experiences; Multi-agency response to child sexual abuse in the family environment
| Author | Caroline Bald,Sharon Brereton,Becky Shepherd |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550520917230 |
| Subject Matter | Research & reports |
Research & reports
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
Research & reports
2020, Vol. 67(2) 167–172
ª The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550520917230
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Inspection of Integrated Offender Management
It has been 11 years since the introduction of Integrated Offender Management
(IOM) with what was original seen as both common-sense joined-up approach
integral to the Government’s approach to prevent crime and reduce reoffending.
Since the first inspection in 2014 of six areas, this Criminal Justice Joint Inspection
(CJJI) report regrets to have found little has changed when revisiting in 2019.
Interviewing 44 probation staff and reviewing 268 IOM cases, the findings are
‘disappointing’ with IOMs centrality in criminal justice policy ‘less explicit now’,
perhaps indicative of why the 2014 recommendation of a system of measuring
impact has not being fully implemented, and significantly only in 14 of the 43 police
forces across England and Wales (p. 4). While the common sense of a joined-up
approach was tantalising, it is apparent from reading this report that far from
bringing service provision together, the restructuring of transforming rehabilitation
has in many ways eroded practices with the political landscape and perhaps will no
longer evident.
Key findings
Since five pioneer IOM areas were introduced in August 2008, there are now 125
IOM schemes across England and Wales, though the Joint Inspection concluded it is
‘not known’ how many cases are managed in IOM (p. 6).
The report makes 11 recommendations including Ministry of Justice to commis-
sion an independent evaluation of the cost and benefits of IOM, prisons and pro-
bation to provide service user need data to develop local-level service
commissioning and to establish a joint national oversight group between police and
probation IOM leads, though curiously not prisons.
While note is made of the estimated cost of reoffending to the public at 18.1
billion, there is no corresponding total spend on IOM to date.
Good practice was highlighted where there was an evident cross-agency joined-
up approach though interestingly largely limited to metropolitan areas.
Poor practice highlighted largely relates to the mechanisms IOM was intended
to overcome; sharing of information either by shared data systems or commu-
nication. Where gaps were found, it was not for the lack of knowledge but there
lack of sharing information, which meant that there was limited evidence of
168
Probation Journal 67(2)
maximising IOM as a joined-up approach. Poor practice was not denoted by
area.
Working on small numbers (20 of 58 cases cautioned or convicted in the period
of supervision), inspectors assessed frequency and seriousness of proven reof-
fending – 5% reduced frequency with the majority (65% ‘stayed the same’) and 5%
reduced seriousness while 75% ‘stayed the same’ (p. 38). Starkly, 30%...
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