Integrated Offender Management

The Community Safety Partnership has one overriding objective, to make Wandsworth a safe place to live, work, learn and visit - for all.

One of the ways in which this objective is to be achieved is by reducing adult offending and adult reoffending especially of those offenders who have a disproportionate effect on levels of crime and victimisation in Wandsworth. There are also key inter-relationships between this priority and the Council plans to keep children and young people safe and safer neighbourhoods.

It is the role of the Integrated Offender Management (IOM), overseen by the Strategic Reducing Reoffending Board and the Operational Reducing Reoffending group to deliver positive outcomes for this particular objective. IOM is a nationally recognised approach endorsed by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) as a key effective model to reduce crime and reoffending. IOM is a multi-agency partnership approach that brings together a number of stakeholders to supervise, manage and positively impact on the criminal activity of a defined group of offenders within the community and who are presenting high complexity of problems, needs and vulnerabilities.

In line with the Mayor Office for Policing and Crime guidance, core attention is paid to perpetrators of complex, high-harm crimes such as domestic abuse, domestic burglaries, robberies where there is a threat of violence towards an individual. At the same time we locally set priorities that reflect our local crimes. This gives more control, freedom and flexibility to us and our partners to take action on the crimes that affect our own residents the most. 

Partnership

Under this model, partners with specific areas of expertise work jointly to manage offenders. In Wandsworth borough the main partner organisation working together within the IOM framework are:

• Metropolitan Police Service
• National Probation Service (NPS)
• Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC)
• HMP Wandsworth
• Youth Offending Services
• NHS Mental Health Services
• Wandsworth Borough Council
  • Community Safety Services
  • Housing Department
  • Social Services Departments
• Statutory Drug and Alcohol Service provider
• Jobcentre Plus
• Other service providers for housing, debt control, substance misuse etc.
• Various projects from Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS).

How the partnership works

Our principles for joint agencies working are as follows:

• All partners involved should manage offenders together, by sharing information in order to achieve greater reductions in reoffending.
• To deliver a local response to locally identified problems
• All offenders are potentially in scope, including MOPAC and local priorities groups
• Offenders facing up to their responsibility or facing the consequences
• Best use made of existing programmes and governance arrangements
• The goal is to achieve long-term desistance from crime

IOM as an evidence based multi-agency partnership approach aims to reduce reoffending and increase social inclusion of offenders by working with identified offenders to challenge their behaviour and address the underlying issues that lead to reoffending. Such offenders tend to lead chaotic lives and have complex needs including in most cases problematic drug addiction.

It is by tackling the causes of their offending that we aim to reduce their re-offending and reduce victimisation. This is achieved by assessing individual need and supporting access and engagement with services across the seven pathways to prevent reoffending as stated by The National Reducing Reoffending Delivery Plan’(NOMS, 2005). The seven pathways are:

• Attitudes, thinking and behaviour
• Accommodation
• Children and families
• Drugs and alcohol
• Education, training and employment
• Finance, benefit and debt
• Physical and mental health