To research worldwide practice to inform implementation of Victoria Police Offender Management Project

Throughout its 150 plus year tradition, Victoria Police has provided excellence in responding to and investigating crime, which continues today.  However, over a 5 year period ending 2016 saw a consistent increase in crime throughout Victoria.  This was coupled with the fact that Victoria Police were charging more offenders than ever before, and prison populations were increasing.  As a result, the organisation decided that it needed to change its thinking. This led to the introduction of the Offender Management Project, which was established to develop a standardised and sustainable approach to how VicPol deal with repeat offenders. Since its implementation, the team has studied other similar types of programs dealing with managing offenders from around globe.  A lot of the thinking was established from our research from across the UK, due mainly to the similarities of the criminal justice system. I was provided access to many of those agencies throughout my travel.  To see them working on the ground gave me (and ultimately my project team) the satisfaction that our thinking was in line with what has been proven to work over many years.  There were many highlights throughout the trip, too many to mention, but it was fairly obvious that in all of those cities I visited, having a working partnership between law enforcement, corrections, probation and the support agencies, is something that was amazing to see.  Not to say VicPol don’t have these relationships, but the partnerships in these cities were next level. There are many recommendations that will be made in concluding this report but probably the major one will be the need for a peak government body to oversee this type of work.  Whilst each of the agencies will be able to, or currently are, achieving similar work in their own space, to bring this all together needs the oversight of a government body. Keywords: Victoria Police, offender management, focussed deterrence, police, restorative justice, crime prevention, early intervention, repeat offenders