From offender management to serious crime reduction: lessons from the Joint Intelligence Programme

• In Event: Sticking to the script? Innovations in organised crime reduction

Abstract

This paper reports findings from an evaluation of an innovative multi-agency approach to the prevention of serious organised crime that has been piloted by HM Prisons and Probation Service in Wales: The Joint Intelligence Programme (JIP). Central to the innovation of this programme is a recognition of the role that mismanagement of offenders by police and criminal justice agencies can play in the reproduction of criminal networks and the associated organisation of serious crimes. Having recognised this potential, the JIP promotes a multi-agency approach to the reduction of serious crime that is underpinned by joint intelligence from police, probation, and prison services about nominals during their terms of imprisonment and whilst released on license. The paper reports on key findings from an evaluation of this multi-agency process, informed by 15 focus groups with officers involved in the programme and 46 hours of structured observation of the multi-agency case conferences (MACCs) in which intelligence was exchanged between these and other authorities responsible for organised crime reduction. In these terms, the JIP provides a case study of how the actors, scripts, scenes and scenarios of serious crime can be rendered thinkable through joint intelligence and the implications of this for shifting the policy response beyond offender management to strategies of crime reduction that encompass other actors and activities than those of the nominals themselves.

Authors

• Adam Michael Edwards, Cardiff University

• Mike Levi, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University

• Bronwen Frow-Jones, Cardiff University