Eight serial crooks responsible for 11% of crime in Hartlepool

A report of the multi-agency Safer Hartlepool Partnership said that according to latest available data 11.8% of crimes in town where someone was charged was carried out by only eight repeat offenders.

Many offenders, both adults and juveniles, are going on to commit more crimes.

In 2015/16, 40% of adult offenders in Hartlepool reoffended, while the figure rose to 57% for juveniles.

And last year, just over half of offenders (377) were responsible for 81% of all crime in Hartlepool equating to 1,524 offences, and an average of four each.

The report stated: “Further analysis identifies 8 individuals as having committed 15 or more offences and being responsible for 11.3% of detected crime in Hartlepool.”

The multi-agency Local Criminal Justice Partnership (LCJP) for Cleveland and Durham is currently developing a major piece of work called a Performance Framework to better measure its key aims of reducing offending and re-offending and supporting victims by using more up to date data.

Jeanne Trotter, Crime Offending and Justice Project Lead, said despite millions being spent in the last decade reoffending rates remained largely unchanged.

She told the partnership: “We know that the number of reoffences per offender is increasing both amongst adults and juveniles.

“That’s a concern for us across Cleveland and Durham that our reoffending figures are increasing and the number of offences committed are increasing.”

Ms Trotter told the partnership about projects of the LCJP to support people not to reoffend focusing on key issues such as employment, accommodation and supporting family ties.

Councillor Christopher Akers-Belcher, chair of the Safer Hartlepool Partnership, asked: “What can the local authority and partners within the community safety partnership do to give you the data of who we should be targeting?

“What can we do as a partnership to inform this piece of work?”

Ms Trotter said crime data should be fed into a Reducing Reoffending sub group of the LCJP and offered to return to the partnership later.

She said: “All of this really requires a two way dialogue. We can only do so much. We are very dependant on other people bringing us the information and issues, allowing us to raise them.

“It’s absolutely essential to have a performance framework if we are ever going to achieve any of this, but it’s not something we can do overnight. This is very early stages.”