About us
How NOMS works
NOMS has a key role to play in ensuring that the public are protected from offenders, that those who offend are punished and that fewer offenders re-offend. This should lead to less crime in society and make our communities safer places to live in.
Whether offenders are in prison or in the community, we need to manage them better to stop them re-offending. Many of the offenders in our system are from socially excluded groups and in reaching them, we need to offer them the chance to engage with society in meaningful ways. We need to offer them the chance to change and to address their offending behaviour.
To do this we are reforming the system (new window) to:
• provide a more coherent end to end service - managing offenders across the entire life of their sentence.
• drive greater efficiency across the system by prioritising and targeting resources where they will deliver the greatest benefit to the public.
• draw on the knowledge and expertise of the public, private and third sectors to provide more innovative solutions to tackling offending behaviour.
• encourage decision making at the most local level possible to better meet the needs of local communities.
Commissioning
Central to NOMS' vision is the concept of commissioning (new window), which will see service level agreements and contracts established with a wide range of offender management services from the public, private and voluntary and community sectors.
These providers will be delivering services to punish, support and reform offenders. A vibrant mix of provider organisations all with different strengths will focus on helping offenders turn away from a life of crime.
Local delivery
In each of the NOMS regions there is a regional offender manager (ROM) who is responsible for overseeing the management of services offered by service providers.
Local delivery focusing more on individuals at a local level will be possible through the regional delivery of offender management (new window).
Each of the nine ROMs in England and a director of offender management in Wales will help increase the range of people and organisations who can help to punish, educate and rehabilitate offenders.
The offender's past education, employment possibilities, substance misuse problems and family make-up are just some of the factors that are considered when designing individual programmes to help them stop offending.
National Reducing Re-offending Delivery Plan
The National Reducing Re-offending Delivery Plan (new window) sets out NOMS' key commitments to reduce re-offending and better protect the public.
This work is delivered in regional reducing re-offending plans and is based around seven pathways (new window) or areas of concern which need to be managed to make an impact on re-offending.
