Drug Interventions Programme
Strategy
The Drug Interventions Programme (the Programme) is a key part of the Government’s strategy for tackling drugs and reducing crime. And it’s working: drug-related crime has fallen by a fifth since the Programme started and record numbers of people are being helped with their drug misuse.
Introduced in 2003, with new elements having been phased in each year since, the Programme aims to get adult drug-misusing offenders out of crime and into treatment and other support. Some interventions operate right across England and Wales, while additional “intensive” elements operate in those areas with the highest acquisitive crime.
- The Government initially funded the Programme at £447 million for three years, but the initiative has been so successful that public funding is continuing beyond the original period.
- In fact, over £500 million has been invested in DIP in the past four years and there is continued central funding, at a slightly reduced level, to ensure that DIP’s processes become the established way of working with drug-misusing offenders across England and Wales.
- As the benefits are realised in evidenced crime reduction, some areas are now showing interest in investing local funding to operate some elements of DIP that cannot be centrally funded.
- DIP provides new ways of working as well as linking existing ones across the criminal justice system, healthcare and drug treatment services and a range of other supporting services.
- The Programme has introduced a case-management approach to offer offenders treatment and support from the point of arrest to beyond sentencing. Sharing information on the treatment needs of individual offenders allows professional multi-skilled teams to provide tailored solutions.
Though DIP is delivered at local level, via DATs supported by regional Government Office leads and NTA regional teams, the Programme as a whole is driven by a central policy team in the Offender-based Interventions Unit (OIU). This sits within the Police and Crime Standards Directorate (PCSD) of the Home Office.
To ensure that central direction is both ambitious and realistic, the DIP team is made up of a blend of experienced civil servants and practitioners experienced in the frontline of criminal justice services and treatment provision.
Download a document showing which elements of the programme operate where.
