This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Sex offenders will be given support to help find a job and make new friends under a pioneering scheme run by a university and backed by police. The initiative aims to integrate people back into society to prevent them committing further crimes.

Offenders will visit a centre, the first of its kind in the UK, where they will receive employment training – from management skills to writing CVs – as well as help with building a supportive social circle, finding new hobbies or learning basic skills such as cooking.

The strategy’s advocates say that, while they realise it will be controversial, it will reduce reoffending rates. The aim is to work with up to 100 people in the first year.

“We want to make sure they won’t reoffend because they will have found a niche in society, a way of reintegrating,” said Professor Belinda Winder, head of the sexual offences, crime and misconduct research unit at Nottingham Trent University, which is piloting the scheme.

“It’s for people who are going to be rejected, who feel desperate, lonely, isolated, a vicious circle which can contribute to reoffending. We are going to break that vicious cycle, but it’s difficult to know if people are going to be able to stomach this.”

Although programmes already exist to help support convicted sex offenders, the Nottingham scheme, adopted by the Corbett Centre for Prisoner Reintegration, is said to be the world’s first holistic approach to fully integrating sex offenders back into society.

Last year the main sex offender treatment programme for England and Wales was scrapped by the Ministry of Justice after a report revealed it led to more reoffending.

Researchers found that prisoners completing the programme – which was designed to challenge the behaviour of male sex offenders with psychological techniques to change their thinking – were more likely to commit further crimes. Reoffending rates for sex offenders are between 10 to 14%.

The centre itself will have police from the Nottinghamshire’s force on site at various times during the week so they can meet sex offenders on licence, a move that will help save time and resources tracking down their whereabouts.

Nottinghamshire’s police and crime commissioner Paddy Tipping said: “This groundbreaking piece of work will hopefully set the new standard for post-sentence reintegration into the community. It’s absolutely logical.

“If we can rehabilitate offenders and support them as they return to live in the community, they will be safer and less likely to reoffend. This in turn means there will be fewer victims of sexual abuse and harm. It’s an ambitious project and I’m proud to be involved.”

The centre will be housed at a university-owned building in the middle of the city.

“We’re mindful of the difficulties of what we’re doing,” said Winder. “But remember that people are free to walk anywhere in the city and go, for instance, to Costa Coffee.”

The centre will be launched this week by Safer Living Foundation (SLF), a partnership between HMP Whatton in Nottinghamshire and the school of social sciences at Nottingham Trent University.

Lynn Saunders, chair and co-founder of SLF and governor of HMP Whatton, said the centre was a “much needed resource”.

Winder added: “We’re giving people somewhere to go to help them to build a better new life, to get the support they want rather than, for example, wandering around the train station.”

She added that two other UK regions had already expressed interest in adopting the model.

10-14%

The reoffending rate for sex offenders in England and Wales

121,000

The number of sexual offences recorded by police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2017

14%

The increase in the number of sexual offences compared with 2016, the highest since the Sexual Offences Act was introduced in 2003