IMPACT Bristol
Why IMPACT? Bristol has seen year on year reductions in crime for a sustained period, but it was recognised by all the Criminal Justice agencies in the City, that this reduction was beginning to plateau, and that in order to sustain our crime reduction, we would need to adopt a different approach. That approach is IMPACT.

How does IMPACT work?
The IMPACT team consists of offender managers drawn from the Drug Intervention Programme, the police, prison and probation services. They work in an integrated way with a shared caseload to tackle the problems caused by the 500 most prolific offenders in Bristol. This will increase to 1000 individuals by April 2011 by which time the team will have fully integrated with CJIT and expanded from the current focus on prolific acquisitive offenders.

Offenders are targeted through the pooled intelligence of the 4 constituent parts of the team and their progress through the prison system and in the community is monitored by the continued use of shared intelligence. Where offenders start to go "off the rails" a series of tactical options are considered and may be deployed by any one of the offender managers alone or in collaboration with colleagues from a different discipline.

Arrangements are in place to enable offenders to access the services that can lead to a pathway out of crime and great effort is spent encouraging and maintaining offenders in the services that provide the best route into a better life. When things go wrong shared intelligence and the close links with Neighbourhood Police teams means the team members know about problems more quickly than when they worked in isolation. Arrangements are in place for the speedy arrest and recall or prosecution of offenders believed to be at high risk of re-offending or committing crime.

What is the IMPACT?
The intensive and integrated approach to managing offenders has shown some early positive results. We are now managing four times more offenders than the prolific offender scheme did, and the cohort has become far more dynamic, with 65% now managed in the community. Offenders are taken onto the caseload far more quickly and removed once their risk levels have fallen. They can be managed earlier in their criminal career in conjunction with the Youth Offending Team. It is anticipated that bringing the CJIT under the IMPACT umbrella will result in a far more robust approach to managing the offending behaviour of drug misusing offenders, and re-focus the Drug Interventions Programme as a Home Office crime reduction initiative.