The Cheshire & Greater Manchester Community Rehabilitation Company (CGM CRC) protects your community by reducing re-offending.
We supervise offenders aged 18 and over in the community who are sentenced by the court to either a Community Order or a Suspended Sentence Order. We also supervise people allocated to our service who are in custody and those released from prison on licence. CGM CRC commissions a service called Through the Gate which aims to help prisoners preparing to make the transition from custody through to the community.
The best way to prevent people from becoming victims of crime is to stop people from committing crime. This is why rehabilitation is central to our approach. Our skilled probation staff use our innovative Interchange Model in order to affect change. We designed the model with a view to supporting people on probation by focusing on their strengths. We are also working with Manchester Metropolitan University to research and evaluate the model.
Our approach to reducing re-offending focuses on not only holding people to account for their actions, but on supporting their rehabilitation.
Some of the problems offenders may face include:
- homelessness
- unemployment
- drug or alcohol misuse
- health issues
- debt
Ensuring the people we supervise get the right support they need to address these issues is central to helping them stop committing more crime.
We do this using a wide variety of approaches, such as:
- supervision on a one-to-one basis
- programmes and interventions that address behaviours linked to crime
- Community Payback
- women specific initiatives – such as women’s centres and programmes
- approaches aimed at supporting prolific offenders to stop them committing more crime
- working in partnership with a wide range of agencies to support people as they reintegrate into the community
- Through the Gate, which is aimed at offenders leaving custody
We have many success stories of people whom we have helped reintegrate into society, as well as statistics that show what we do works.
CGM CRC is one of five CRCs run by Purple Futures, a partnership led by Interserve and that also includes charities and social enterprises. Purple Futures provides probation and rehabilitation services on behalf of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in five areas of the UK. To find out more about Interserve, click here.
The CRCs were launched following the Government’s Transforming Rehabilitation reforms that came into effect in 2015. The reform created 21 CRCs to supervise offenders assessed as posing either a low or medium risk of committing a serious crime. The legislation also established a National Probation Service to supervise high risk offenders. Together with the NPS, we deliver probation services across the North West.
Purple Futures successfully bid for the contracts to deliver rehabilitation services in five contract areas: Cheshire & Greater Manchester; Merseyside; West Yorkshire; Humberside, Lincolnshire & North Yorkshire and the Hampshire & Isle of Wight.
To read more about the Government’s objectives click here.