26 November 2013 | Comments
The St Helena Police and Prison Service has recently welcomed four additions to their ranks – a Probation Officer and three Police Constables from the UK (photo attached).
Probation Officer, Victoria Kellet, is based and working at the St Helena Prison. Victoria is here on a two year contract and will be focusing on public protection and rehabilitation, addressing the underlying reasons why people have committed offences and putting processes in place that will hopefully prevent them from reoffending in the future.
Victoria explained:
“There’s been real investment in rehabilitation services on St Helena and trying to better understand what has caused people to commit offences and what has got them into custody. That work that has already started at the prison has been fantastic – and they’ve done really well with the limited resources they have available.”
Victoria will now build on the work that has already been done at the prison and is currently observing processes and meeting with the prisoners to make initial assessments of what their needs are, and where they are in terms of reoffending.
Victoria said:
“My initial impressions have been very positive and things are actually much more progressed than I’d expected. The commitment shown and the motivation to really try and get things moving in the right direction has been fantastic and hopefully during my time here I can extend that.”
Victoria studied Psychology and joined the Sussex and Surrey Probation Trust as a Trainee Officer where she undertook a further degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice studies. Victoria qualified as a Probation Officer in 2007/08 working in a generic offending team supervising caseloads upwards of 60 offenders at a time. Victoria has also worked within the West Sussex Court Service before moving into a training and development role training probation staff. For the last 2 ½ years Victoria has worked in a dedicated team working solely with registered sex offenders, counter terrorism offenders and life sentence prisoners.
Meanwhile, the Police Service welcomes Police Officers John Rigby, an Ex-Merseyside Police Officer, David Brooksbank, an Ex-West Yorkshire Police Officer and Phillip Tester from Strathclyde Police in Scotland.
All will be on Island for the next three months supporting the St Helena Police Service with general policing duties.
John was a general Police Officer for 20 years in Liverpool City Centre, spending some time in the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). John’s work has mostly been based around operational matters but he became a Police Trainer and Training Development Officer while in the Police. John now has his own company offering professional police training to Constabularies in the UK and while on St Helena he hopes to be able to offer training to the Police Officers here.
David worked in the West Yorkshire Police for 30 years and is now retired. The bulk of David’s career was spent in CID work and working with sex crimes. David studied Criminology and is particularly interested in managing sexual offences, investigating male predators and the safety of women.
Phillip was a Detective based in Glasgow for 23 years involved in everything from general investigation to serious crime squad to surveillance work. As a Detective Sergeant, Phillip investigated public protection and sex offenders.
All three commented on the good standard of work by the Police Service, given the limited resources available on St Helena.
David said:
“I think the police service here do a good job with the limited resources they have. There’s obviously a problem with recruitment and retention but I think they do a fantastic job. The intelligence potential is also very good.”
While here, John, David and Phillip will observe the systems in place and suggest areas that might need improvement. Hopefully they will pass on some of their wide experience to Officers on the Island while also focusing on policing in a small community.
SHG
25 November 2013
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