General Information

Introduction

When an offender is charged with further offending, the action taken by the probation officer should take into account the:

• risk of the offender
• seriousness of the offending, and
• sentence/order.

OWS offender

If an offender on the offender warning system (OWS) is charged with further offending, the probation officer must respond immediately. This should include reassessing and responding to any increase in the offender's risk.

Reference: If the offender is on parole, refer to Volume 2, Part VII, Non-compliance and Enforcement, Enforcement guidelines. (Please refer to the related links section on this page).

Note: An incident report must be completed when the offender is charged.

Provide on-strength information

The probation officer should provide on-strength information for the offender's appearance in court, as appropriate.

Multiple sentences

If the offender is subject to any other sentence/order, the probation officer responsible for managing the rehabilitative sentence should liaise with CPPS staff managing the other sentence(s) to determine the appropriate course of action in response to the new charges.

Discuss with offender

The probation officer should discuss the new charges with the offender at the next scheduled report in.

If the next scheduled report in is not within seven days, the offender should be contacted and instructed to report within this time frame.

Event based review

An event based review of the offender plan should be completed to record details of the new charges and action taken by the probation officer.

Record keeping

All details of the new charges should be recorded in casenotes. This should include:

• what the offending was
• the outcome of the court appearance, and
• the action to be taken by the probation officer.