Weekly Meeting

2 February 2018  Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangement – Victoria Hurst

Victoria x teacher and probation officer, gave very informative and humorous talk about MAPPA.   

She outlined how MAPPA provides for the establishment of “arrangements” in each of the 42 criminal justice areas in England and Wales. 

MAPPA is not a statutory body in itself but is a mechanism through which agencies can better discharge their statutory responsibilities and protect the public in a co-ordinated manner. MAPPA allows agencies to assess and manage offenders on a multi-agency basis by working together, sharing information and meeting to ensure that effective plans are put in place. Agencies retain their full statutory responsibilities and obligations at all times. The other agencies mentioned were: probation services, the police, prison services, health services, social services, education services and victim support) All MAPPA offenders are assessed to establish the level of risk of harm they pose to the public. Risk management plans are then worked out for each offender to manage those risks. These set out the action that needs to be taken to minimise the risk. Some measures that can be considered are:

·         Ensuring offenders have suitable accommodation, which can include requiring the offender to reside at a probation run Approved Premises on release.

·         Placing controls on the offender's behaviour through strict licence conditions which can include not to have contact with a named individual or not to enter a defined exclusion zone

·         Intensive supervision by a probation officer offender manager and/or community public protection police

·         Ensure the offender attends identified accredited programmes and other interventions (such as drug and alcohol programmes) aimed at reducing further offending.

Registered sexual offenders who do not comply with the notification requirements can be taken to court by the police and could face a fine and/or up to five years in prison. A failure to comply does not necessarily mean that an offence has been committed; it could be a missed appointment or any behaviour which gives cause for concern.

As well as providing some ‘local statistics on, the number of prisons and offenders, she gave personal illustrations of her involvement with:-

·         identification and notification of MAPPA offenders

·         information sharing

·         disclosure and risk assessment

·         risk management plans

·         multi-agency public protection meetings

·         custody, recall and transfer of MAPPA cases

·         critical public protection cases

·         mentally disordered offenders and MAPPA

Our Club enthusiastically showed its appreciation of Victoria’s presentation in the usual way and finally President Adrian presented Victoria with a cheque for The Nottingham Hospice. Derek G