In 2004 the Prime Minister announced a Prolific and Priority Offenders (PPO) scheme for tackling these 5,000: to prevent and deter, catch and convict, rehabilitate and resettle them. This PPO scheme can be written into local policing plans. Under it, a local force can identify a number of its worst offenders and intervene to help reduce their offending and reintegrate them into society. The police can intervene when these offenders appear in court but can also take the initiative themselves and approach identified individuals and ask them to participate in the scheme before they have committed any particular crime.

The core of the PPO scheme is individual case management based on a care plan. It may involve helping the offender with housing (an appointment with housing agencies on the day of release from prison and support with housing benefit claims). It may consist of help with employment and training (such as payments towards courses or equipment like safety gear for use on building sites), help in getting a doctor, a dentist or a counsellor, or the provision of food vouchers on release. It may involve trying to re-engage offenders with their families. In essence, it amounts to preferential treatment offered to members of a particularly problematic group of offenders on the practical ground that helping them out of crime will be of the greatest benefit to the whole community.

Prolific and Priority Offenders are defined as ‘persistent offenders who pose the greatest threat to the safety and confidence of their communities. Many of them frequently have drug problems and commit crime to support their drug habit’. Government Office for the South West website,

http://www.gos.gov.uk/gosw/commsafety/crintiatives/ppos/

The Home Office estimates that 100,000 offenders commit 50 per cent of all crime.