Operational Policing
Prolific and other Priority Offenders
Half of all crime is committed by 10% of offenders. The Prolific and other Priority Offenders (PPO) programme aims to reduce re-offending in this group. So far, the programme has had a significant impact across all crime types.
Home Office research published in 2001 showed that 100,000 offenders (10% of all offenders on the offenders index) in England and Wales are responsible for over half of all crime, with their actions having enormous effect on local communities.
In response to this, the Prime Minister launched the PPO programme in March 2004 as a cross-Government initiative to tackle this group of offenders. It is a crime reduction programme with a reducing re-offending focus. The programme replaced the previous 'Persistent Offenders Scheme'
The programme is led by Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs) in England and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) in Wales, working closely with Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs). PPO schemes are now established in every CDRP and CSP area and feature a joined-up multi-agency offender management model involving representatives from the local Police and Probation Services, Local Authorities and Youth Offending Teams.
PPO schemes are currently working with over 10,000 PPOs and a further 4,000 young offenders most at risk of becoming tomorrow's PPOs.
The Prolific and other Priority Offenders (PPO) programme
The three strands of the programme aim to:
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Catch and Convict offenders who commit most crime in their locality, or whose offending causes most harm to their community;
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Rehabilitate and Resettle those identified as 'PPOs', working with them to stop their offending by offering a range of supportive interventions addressing identified needs/risks of further offending. The opportunity to rehabilitate is backed by a swift return to court if offending continues;
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Prevent and Deter to increase the overall impact of the strategy by ensuring that those effectively targeted by Catch & Convict/Rehabilitate & Resettle are not replaced by a next generation of offenders. The principal aim is to stop the most active young offenders escalating into tomorrow's prolific offenders through youth justice interventions and continued post-sentence support
Evaluation report published
The recent 'Rebalancing the Criminal Justice System' paper contained a commitment to re-launch the PPO Programme and to align it more closely with the Drugs Intervention Programme (DIP) (new window) . The aim of the alignment is to ensure that the most prolific drug-misusing offenders are identified, targeted and managed.
An evaluation of the PPO Programme has now been published. It indicates that the programme has had a major effect on the offending rates of PPO with a significant reduction in recorded convictions. It also reports that staff working in PPO schemes are very positive about the programme, particularly around the benefits of increased partnership working and data sharing.
Read the report on the Crime Reduction website (new window).
