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New data on re-offending for Prolific and other Priority Offenders (PPOs) and drug-misusing offenders

At the end of 2010 the Home Office published its latest analysis of re-offending rates for Prolific and other Priority Offenders (PPOs) and Class A drug-misusing offenders. The two reports use a similar approach. Both track the progress of a national cohort, looking at changes in proven offending for that cohort over time. ‘Proven offending’ is measured by offences proven by a conviction in court, cautions, reprimands and final warnings. In both cases these latest reports, which report on a 2009 cohort, update previous reports that reported on a 2008 cohort. In both cases this data comes from the Police National Computer (Home Office 2010a, 2010b). The PPO programme provides ‘end-to-end’ management of the most active and locally damaging offenders. Management is by a number of agencies that typically include the police, probation, local authorities, prison services, Youth Offending Teams and drug services. Offenders are designated as PPOs by these local partners and, therefore the size of the PPO cohort in a local area will be influenced by a range of factors including, ‘the number of offenders who meet the locally agreed selection criteria and the capacity of local partner agencies to provide the intensive management of offenders under PPO supervision’ (Home Office, 2010a: 4). The PPO cohort is identified as PPOs by local PPO schemes at 1 February 2009. The analysis compares the level of proven offending during the baseline period, which for this cohort was between1 October 2007 and 30 September 2008 with the level of proven offending during the follow-up period, which ran from1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010. The cohort for this study contained 10,635 individuals. The mean age for offenders in the cohort was 27 years. The under-18 age group formed 6 per cent of the 2009 PPO cohort. Ninety-seven per cent of the 2009 PPO cohort was recorded as male (Home Office, 2010a). A national cohort of known Class A drug-misusing offenders is identified. The four types of contact used as identification sources for the cohort are: