Community strategies for managing high-risk offenders: the contribution of multi-agency public protection arrangements

High-risk offenders have attracted much media and political interest in recent times (Kitzinger, 2004; Thomas, 2005), not least due to high-profile failures to effectively manage them in the community. Cases such as the murder of John Monckton by Damien Hanson whilst subject to parole supervision have placed both agency proce- dures and multi-agency arrangements under the spotlight (see, for example, the HMIP inquiry report: HMIP, 2006). Other inspection reports have raised concerns about the effective management of sex offenders in the community (HMIP, 2005), drawing attention to [until comparatively recently]: the lack of accredited treatment programmes in the community and the resultant long delays for some sex offenders; the limited availability of surveillance and the necessity to balance its use against other competing demands; the lack of specific training for staff working with sex offenders; the fact that Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) processes for managing sex offenders varied across the country; and that good practice tended to be based on personal experience and anecdotal data rather than research evidence (pp. 9–11). This has resulted in increased policy and practice concern with high-risk offend- ers, and most notably sex offenders, followed by a raft of legislation to deal more proactively with those deemed to present the highest risk of harm (Kemshall, 2003a).