Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to improve the effectiveness of information sharing between police, probation, mental health services and other agencies in managing high risk offenders on release from custody.

Offenders convicted of serious sexual, violent or terrorist offences are managed under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), under which Police, Probation and Prison Services work with other agencies to assess and manage their risks. The statutory MAPPA Framework provides agencies with the power to share information. To strengthen the way in which agencies share information, we have recently updated chapters on the duty to cooperate, accommodation and employment and mentally disordered offenders in the Secretary of State’s statutory guidance to the MAPPA agencies. The Police, Probation and Prison Service share information about MAPPA offenders using ViSOR, a secure, shared national database.

The Ministry of Justice is working closely with the Home Office to develop a modernised Multi-Agency Public Protection System (MAPPS) which will replace ViSOR by summer 2028.

The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway, a joint programme between NHS and HMPPS provides services for high-risk offenders who are likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for “personality disorder”. A National Partnership Agreement and a national Data Sharing Agreement in each service’s OPD contract set out expectations and arrangements for information sharing.

The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have initiated a data-sharing taskforce to facilitate better data-sharing between CJS partners, primarily between the Police and the Ministry of Justice. This will be critical to support coordination of services and improved outcomes in operational environments, such as managing high risk offenders on release from custody.

The Ministry of Justice is also working with:

• the Home Office to develop Justice ID, which will provide a set of building blocks that together allow staff to consistently identify and track the same individual from arrest, through the courts and custody, and into the community.

• the Department for Education to implement the information sharing duty that was introduced in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.