Ending The Revolving Door
This briefing highlights to Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) candidates the importance of dealing effectively with revolving door offenders. By working in partnership to address multiple needs, they can reduce crime and maintain an efficient police force. In the year ending June 2010, former offenders committed nearly half a million crimes. Repeat offending and anti-social behaviour is causing serious damage to communities, taking up valuable police resources, and placing a major burden on the public purse. A significant proportion of this is by people with multiple needs. They are falling through gaps in services and failing to get the help they need to stop offending.
People experiencing multiple needs come into frequent contact with emergency services and are well-known to the police. They are often repeatedly arrested, and their criminal and anti-social behaviour puts daily pressure on police resources and harms communities. Their multiple unmet needs can include mental ill health, drug and alcohol problems, unemployment and homelessness. These problems reinforce each other, and combined with ineffective contact with services, result in a cycle of crisis and crime.
Each contact with the police presents an opportunity to access interventions, such as mental health treatment and drug and alcohol services. Too often these opportunities are missed. Many people end up serving costly short prison sentences, only to reoffend without being given support for their problems when they are released. The cost to public services is huge. As an emergency service, the police foot a large proportion of the bill when other services fail to offer support. Getting people the right treatment at the right time to address their multiple underlying problems and offending behaviour could seriously reduce the cost of the services they use.
The paper ends with three main recommendations for the first generation of PCCs.
