High Risk and Serious Offenders – Semester 1 Assessment

Part A

The Hanson and White report was devised after Hanson and White were convicted of the murder of John Monckton, and the attempted murder of his wife. Although this murder itself was dreadful, the issue that understandably caused the greatest amount of public concern was that when the murder was committed, both men were supposed to be under the supervision of the London Probation Area (LPA). Hanson was under the conditions of a parole, Whilst White was taking part in a Drug Treatment and Testing Order (DTTO). For this report I am going to produce a critique of the role of all agencies involved in the interventions. I will do this in order to look whether the interventions carried were done so effectively. In doing I will examine what could, or should, have been done in order to stop circumstances and crimes such theses occurring.

Agencies

Before looking interventions, we first need to identify the agencies who took control of the offenders. In doing this we shall see whether they chose the correct intervention, how they choose it, and what it was suppose to do, followed by their success.

Hanson was considered for release on parole on two occasions, both times in which the parole panel were given A Parole Assessment Report (PAR) produced by the home officer along with Reports from prison staff and Probation Officers. A full Risk of Harm (RoH) assessment and an Offender Assessment System (OASys) had also been completed. These risk assessments included an OGRS score of 91% which assessed Hanson as presenting a high Risk of Harm (RoH), however they were not made available to the parole panel and so were not able be acted on by the LPA. As a result Hanson was not referred to MAPPA when he quiet clearly should have been, and instead was granted release.

Overall there was a collective failure within the LPA and prison and probation staff, both to identify Hanson’s nature of risk to others and to act to keep risk of harm to a minimum.

Hanson was also advised to complete the anger management programme ‘CALM’ after his first consideration for release on parole was rejected. The parole board underestimated the relevance of Hanson’s propensity to use instrumental violence, as the ‘CALM’ programme that he completed did not address that type of violence, so was irrelevant.

White’s first period of supervision started in July 2003 when he was put on a 12 month Community Rehabilitation Order (CRO) for possessing heroin and cocaine. This  CRO was disorganised with many administrative errors which lead to the failure to take breach action appropriately. At one point nearly 4 months that went by without any contact between White and LPA, and when contact was finally resumed staff were not clear when re-outlining the conditions of his CRO. Therefore it would seem that White had a weak understanding of the seriousness of supervision and low regard for the importance of complying with the order.

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When White was finally called to court for further breach of the order, a full pre-sentence report was not completed by the LPA, and the expedited report given lacks any significant information. OASys and OGRS2 assessments also failed to be undertaken, meaning that the making of the DTTO was based on very inadequate information. Bearing in mind the experience of the LPA in working with him over the previous year this was simply not good enough.

Interventions – Effectiveness

After being granted early release Hanson was given a parole licence that would last from August 2004 until August ...

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