Wakefield District
The Wakefield District is served by two Probation Offices: one in the city of Wakefield and the other, 12 miles to the east, in the town of Pontefract. Wakefield is the location of both the West Yorkshire Probation Service Head Office, and the West Yorkshire Police Headquarters.
The total population is approximately 320,000. The District is a mix of urban and rural areas. The main types of employment are in manufacturing, retail and service industries. The unemployment rate is 5.5% (just above the national average). GCSE attainment is significantly better than average.
At the time of the 2001 census, 97.7% of the population defined themselves as white. 60% of the ethnic minority population defined themselves as Asian or Asian British.
Most of Wakefield`s wards are in the most deprived 25% nationally. The area has higher than average rates of drug misuse, binge drinking, severe mental health problems, smoking and obesity. The District has a higher than average crime rate, reflecting higher levels of burglary, violence, criminal damage, fraud and vehicle theft-related offences. The crime figures reflect a lower than average incidence of robbery, drug and sexual crimes.
What We Do
The District has nearly 100 staff based across the Wakefield and Pontefract offices. They supervise approximately 1200 offenders at any one time. Much of our work is with offenders living in the community; we also work closely with prisoners and young offenders receiving a prison sentence of twelve months or more. We provide approximately 1500 reports annually to assist Magistrates and Judges with sentencing.
We have a specialist team serving local Courts, an Community Payback team and a Victim Services Unit. These are based at our Lawefield Lane office in Wakefield, along with two Offender Management teams and a Programmes team. Another Probation Team is located with Turning Point at Grosvenor House in Wakefield, and together they administer Drug Rehabilitation Requirements.
The Pontefract Office is based on Harropwell Lane and houses two Offender Management Units. The staff supervise offenders who are either on Community Orders or on their release from prison.
(Statistics courtesy of 2001 Census, H.O. 2005, D.O.H. 2006 and WYPS, 2006).
