Nottinghamshire Probation Area Victim Contact Team provide a service to victims and families affected by serious crimes. 

The Probation Service has a duty to contact the Victims of violent and sexual offenders who have been sentenced to imprisonment for a period of 12 months or more. In addition the Probation Service is required to contact victims of offenders who receive a Hospital Order with or without restrictions. The offences that fall within the definition of "sexual or violent offences" includes the most serious offences like Murder and Rape, and also offences such as Assault, Causing death by dangerous driving, Robbery and Indecent assault. We have to contact victims within 8 weeks of sentence. The purpose of our contact is to allow victims to understand the sentence that has been passed and be given information about key developments during an offender’s sentence. We also enable victims to make representations about release and the restrictions that the offender might be subject to on release from prison.

We make contact by letter initially, followed up in most cases by a phone call, and we visit victims in their homes. We can stay in touch with victims all the way through the offender’s sentence and after release, if that is what they want.

The Probation Victim Contact Team has strong links with much of the local Criminal Justice System. For example, we have worked together with victim support on many cases, including some joint visits and we often work with the Police. We also liase with prison staff when we need to. Sharing information across agencies can enable us all to improve our response to victims.

During 2008/2009 the Victim Contact team were involved with 504 new victims, and continued to work with well over 1,000 with whom we have ongoing contact. Of the 504 new victims 270 took up the offer of ongoing contact (54%).

Victims can be the direct victim of the crime or parents, carers, partners (heterosexual, lesbian and gay), children, dependents and others with a close personal relationship to the victim.

The staff in the team do not have any involvement with the offenders; they do liase with the people who manage the offenders, to make sure that the victims’ views are being taken on board in the way the offender is being managed. For example, Victim Contact staff attend Multi Agency Public Protection meetings, to make sure that victims’ issues are taken into account.

The team covers the whole of Nottinghamshire County and Nottingham City (from Bawtry in the North to East Leake in the South!). We are based at Nottinghamshire Probation Area's Derby Road Office and can be contacted on 0115 9082970.