Hertfordshire Police Authority initiated the 'Choices and Consequences' (C2) project. This programme seeks to achieve a long term reduction in crime within Hertfordshire. The project seeks the rehabilitation of prolific non-violent offenders who commit acquisitive offences, including burglary and vehicle crime. It has so far resulted in improved detection rates and cash savings to the public sector and society.
The aims of the programme are to achieve benefits for the following:
- offenders, by providing long term rehabilitation
- society, through reduced crime, reduced fear of crime and an increased confidence in the justice system
- Criminal Justice, through financial and efficiency savings for the Police, Courts and Prison Service
The project was launch in April 2007 and received funding of £600,000 funding for the three years of the project. This has been used to finance:
- additional staffing
- drug treatment interventions
- rehabilitative programmes
- community based interventions
- housing provision, for example rent deposits
- education, training and mentoring
- victim contact
- rehabilitative programmes
The project engages offenders in an individually tailored programme of resettlement, education, training, development and treatment. The intention is for the offenders to break free from a life of crime for the remainder of their lives.
To be suitable, an offender must display a willingness to rehabilitate and be considered to have a reasonable likelihood of success. A key element is the admission of their full criminality to date at the onset, giving them a 'clean slate' from which to progress.
For each offender, the successful transition through the programme may last almost four years. The stages are:
- arrest and interview followed by remand in custody (two to three months)
- assessment on bail (one month)
- deferred sentence (six months)
- community sentence (three years)
At any stage of this programme, offenders who return to crime or fail to engage with the programme can be returned to court and sentenced for their admitted criminality. The length of custody that they might expect is explained to them in court when being placed on the programme.
The programme has so far delivered numerous benefits including:
- improved inter-agency working
- a 1.6 per cent increase in sanction detection rate
- average admitted offences at 91 per offender
- cost per C2 detection of £87 compared to the usual £2,200
- for every offender who stops committing crime, an average of 152 offences could be prevented year on year
- 'society' making an estimated saving of £206,000 through non-offending
- the prison service benefiting from saving an estimated £250,000 from non custodial sentences
- positive reactions from offenders and referrals of other offenders
The project demonstrates the main agencies within the Criminal Justice System working together to achieve the same aims. Offenders are able to see this joint-working in action. Understanding and trust between the agencies has been developed to achieve the openness needed to enable offenders to change.