End-to-end Offender Management

Evidence shows that interventions to rehabilitate and resettle both adult and young offenders are most effective when combined and sequenced as individually tailored packages managed throughout the length of a sentence. This ‘end-to-end’ management of offenders seeks to provide a holistic approach to the delivery of the range of interventions for both adult and young offenders. Although different processes are being used to deal with young people and adults they are based on common principles. Consequently, by matching interventions to need, the new Offender Management Model seeks to ensure the following:

  • Continuity of support from a named manager throughout a sentence including transitions from the community to and from custody.
  • Effective assessment, taking into account the risk factors associated with offending and the individual needs of each offender.
  • Sentence planning in the form of a single sentence plan tailored to address the identified risks and needs of each offender, focused from the outset on promoting a sustainable and safe return to the community.
  • Co-ordination of the contributions of a wide range of agencies and partners, ensuring that services are timely and sustained through the transitions between custody and the community
  • Consolidation of the process through a timely exchange of information and reflective learning
  • Diversity – by ensuring that the specific needs of offenders including gender, ethnicity, religion, and age are taken into account in sentence planning.

These principles are to help all members of an offender management team to treat offenders in the same coherent way, with a view to assisting the rehabilitation of the offender and securing the protection of the public. It is hoped that victims are appropriately involved and informed about the process and their views included in the assessment of the impact of this integrated approach.

An offender management team is made up of an offender manager, offender supervisor, key workers and case administrators. The team helps to design and support individual intervention programmes that will help the offenders change their offending behaviour.

Offender managers work for the Probation Service and are required to assess offenders before they are sentenced. Once a sentence plan has been written the offender management team will identify which intervention programmes can be made available to help the offender change.

Although this is a common model for offender management in practice it varies by area according to regional strategy and by the nature of the establishment. It is summarised by the following diagrams:

The individual programme is then delivered in prison by a group of staff in a model that matches the external offender management team as shown below:

The landing officer involved could be the prisoner’s personal officer and education and training provision represents one of the interventions available for inclusion in a prisoner’s sentence plan.