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Executive Summary
The findings of this inspection show a mixed picture of how agencies manage offenders who pose a risk of serious harm, with variations across the country in risk assessment and risk management practice. Aspects of information sharing required significant improvement, for instance there were serious problems in social work and prisons access to the electronic Violent and Sex Offender Register ( ViSOR) database, which therefore had unfulfilled potential to improve information sharing between agencies. There was also evidence that when a high-risk offender came into custody, information about risk often did not reach the receiving prison.
Community-based social work planning for sex offenders and violent offenders was often not good enough. One-third of the social work plans for sex offenders we reviewed lacked sufficient quality, and plans for two-thirds of serious violent offenders did not have any focus on risk management. Even when plans provided for home and unannounced visits, often these did not occur in practice.
The Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements ( MAPPA) had improved the management of sex offender risk, and the Integrated Case Management ( ICM) approach in prisons had improved the multidisciplinary management of prisoners through their sentence and up to the point of release. Agencies worked in a purposeful manner to protect the public from the risk posed by sex offenders, but the management of serious violent offenders was significantly less encouraging.
Health services in prisons could have contributed better to risk management planning during the custodial term, and in linking with community health colleagues at the time of release. In the community, health professionals involvement in attending and informing MAPPA meetings was very inconsistent, and generally at an unsatisfactory level.
Agencies were using a range of risk assessment tools. Whilst many practitioners said these helped to structure their assessments of risk of reconviction, many were also unclear about the critical importance of also assessing the risk of serious harm. Many police officers considered that they were carrying out unnecessarily detailed risk of reconviction assessments on offenders already screened as presenting a low risk of reconviction.
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