Ministers and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had made the decision that, to tackle the high volume of alcohol-related offences, they would commence legislation to introduce Alcohol Abstinence and Monitoring Requirements (AAMRs) as a new option for courts to consider when sentencing. The requirement imposes a ban on drinking alcohol for up to 120 days and for compliance to be electronically monitored. To do this, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) needed to introduce an alcohol monitoring service which involved procuring a new technology and designing and testing new processes and procedures to support the service and then launch the new initiative across all courts in England and Wales.
Clarasys supported HMPPS in both a business analysis and change management capacity. We worked closely with the policy team in MoJ and the technology provider to ensure the design of the service met the legislative requirements and carried through the learning from earlier piloting activity, met the needs of stakeholders, as well ensuring the service embedded into existing processes and systems. We created and deployed a communications and engagement strategy tailored to each stakeholder group (e.g. the Judiciary, court staff, pre-sentence report writers and probation practitioners) and created training resources such as desktop guides, videos, posters, leaflets and handbooks to ensure frontline staff were equipped with the necessary information and ready. Once live, we monitored uptake, designed tailored initiatives to address areas where uptake was lower than expected and ran refresher training sessions for Probation Practitioners and their admin staff.
- Enabled 3,121 offenders (as of 11 March 2022) to have their alcohol ban effectively monitored in the community to reduce alcohol-related crime
- Introduced the new requirement to the Judiciary as a new tool to tackle alcohol-related offending
- Successfully implemented an alcohol monitoring service, which has shown a high level of compliance with the AAMR (compliance rates at over 97%)
