Restriction and Rehabilitation: Getting the Right ... - Ministry of Justice

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Level 3: Active Multi-agency Management – where the management of
the offender requires the active involvement at a senior level by the
responsible authority and duty to cooperate agencies. This may be when
there is a need to commit significant resources at short notice and/or where
there are significant media and/or public interest issues.
MAPP Management Arrangements – effectiveness of coordination
4.5 The coordination of MAPPA activity is critical to ensuring coherent processes that
contribute to public protection. MAPPA managers and coordinators were in place or
being recruited in all the areas visited. They provided a single point of contact for
notifications of eligible cases and referrals to level 2 and 3 meetings. They also
collated performance information for the SMB.
4.6 All of the SMBs in the probation trusts visited had at least one MAPPA lay advisor
in post. However, two areas were struggling to recruit additional advisors. Most of
the lay advisors interviewed felt positive about their role and described their
induction and training as adequate. Most were involved in MAPPA sub groups, such
as diversity or performance management and clearly aimed to do a thorough and
conscientious job. However, it was hard to quantify their impact on the MAPPA
process in practice, in exchange for the outlay in recruitment and training.
4.7 Each MAPPA SMB is required to collect and collate specified data for the annual
report. Although four of the police forces visited collected a range of additional
performance data, overall, there was little evidence of meaningful performance
monitoring and management beyond monitoring home visits.
ViSOR
4.8 ViSOR (see paragraph 2.4) provides the police, probation and prison services with
a confidential, shared national database of all sexual, violent and other dangerous
offenders. It is the case management tool for the police, but not the probation or
prison services.
4.9 The ViSOR records examined for this inspection included 47 MAPPA level 1
offenders, 13 level 2 offenders, one level 3 offender and one where the level was
not recorded. NOMS ViSOR National Implementation Operational guidance states
that public protection agencies would only use ViSOR to facilitate information
exchange in MAPPA level 2 and 3 cases and not level 1
Implementation of ViSOR in probation trusts
4.10 There are several key users of ViSOR who include:
the manager – the practitioner who manages the ‘nominal’. (i.e.
named offender)
the partner – this role is designed for practitioners, sometimes from
another agency, who assist the manager in managing the nominal.
4.11 As previously indicated, ViSOR has been successfully implemented within the
police forces and its use well established. Whilst it was never intended to replace
personal contact, we heard consistently from the probation and police personnel
during the inspection that the way in which ViSOR had been implemented across
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