The Drug Interventions Programme (DIP) was initially rolled out in April 2003 to areas of high crime and then to the whole of England in 2005. DIP’s aim is to identify and engage with drug using offenders at every stage of the criminal justice system, for example pre-arrest, arrest, sentencing, prison and post-prison release. At each stage, the intention is to provide services tailored to clients’ specific needs, addressing issues such as housing, education, employment, finance, family relationships and health as well as offending behaviour and drug use. DIP aims to provide a beginning-to-end support system that can direct drug using offenders out of crime and into treatment.

In October 2013, the Home Office decommissioned DIP as a national programme and Public Health England (PHE) took responsibility for collecting and reporting the data previously reported to the Home Office for criminal justice interventions. There were some limitations as not all data sets could be reported on by PHE, for example drug testing data, but locally teams had more scope to tailor their data collection to their local needs once it complied with the overarching Required Assessment and PHE criminal justice process. DIP as a programme continues to be implemented across four of the five Merseyside areas (Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral), though the processes remain in place at all stages of the criminal justice system in order to engage offenders into drug treatment within all five areas (DIP ceased to exist in Liverpool in April 2016).

The Monitoring Team have two main roles in relation to the criminal justice data monitoring:

Data collection

Criminal justice data are monitored via the online system, Criminal Justice Interventions Team Data Entry Tool (CJIT DET), collected on a CJIT DET form. We monitor criminal justice data covering each of the five areas across Merseyside (Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral). Furthermore, we collect and report on drug testing data provided by Merseyside police, data from Liverpool Restrictions on Bail sites and other criminal justice sources in Merseyside.

Data monitoring and research

We provide monitoring of criminal justice activity for the Local Authority areas of Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral. Reports are provided to the teams outlining performance at each stage of the process, allowing service providers and commissioners to examine their performance on a monthly basis and tackle any barriers that may exist. A unique element of this reporting is being able to report on drug testing data across Merseyside and link this to individuals seen (or not seen) by the local drug treatment agency. PHE do not have access to this information and as a result cannot comment on clients engaging with this process until they are seen by a drugs worker. In addition to routine reporting, we conduct ad-hoc analysis looking in detail at particular aspects of the scheme and conduct specific commissioned pieces of research as requested on a variety of criminal justice topics.