Known drug users in Nottinghamshire will be getting to know their local beat officer slightly better in the future, as divisional officers and local beat officers follow the example set by their Dutch counterparts in Offender Management.  The initiative aims to reduce the number of drug related offences and encourage drug users to rehabilitate, using local police officers who will ‘Adopt’ known offenders who live in the area.

This is one of a number of early benefits to come from the EU funded Agis research project led by Nottinghamshire Police Authority with support from Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council.

The new initiative will see local officers having specific responsibility for known drug offenders in their area.  They will encourage them to attend their drug treatment courses (and check that they do) and liaise with education and training providers to see that they are actually taking the courses designed to help them gain employment.  

Chief Inspector Colin Martin of Nottinghamshire’s ground-breaking multi-agency Sherwood Project explained a little more about the concept: “We want to see a reduction in volume crimes such as burglary and robbery, which are often carried out to feed a drugs habit.

“We hope that by giving local officers greater involvement with known offenders in this way we will see more people attending their treatment, taking part in training for employment and thereby a reduction in the number of volume crimes.

“It would be highly resource intensive for this work to be carried out by officers from the Sherwood Project, but as Neighbourhood Policing continues to roll out across the County we feel that local officers will be in a far better placed to ‘adopt’ local offenders and monitor their rehabilitation progress.

Chairman of Nottinghamshire Police Authority, John Clarke, said: “Having seen how the well idea works in Holland we hope that it will work equally well here, and already trialling the idea in Worksop. This is exactly the sort of benefit that we hoped we would see from the Agis project.  

“We are using ideas gained from Poland and Holland while they are learning from us.  When the project is completed we feel sure that benefits will be shared on a much wider basis.”