Partner Article

Probation Service gets campaign promotion

A new initiative for the County Durham Probation Service is the latest campaign from Durham marketers The Virgo Consultancy.

A pilot project will be trialled in parts of the county over a three month period and, if successful, could be rolled out nationwide.

‘Doing More to Keep you Safe’ is designed to highlight the work done with adult offenders. Aimed at the general public, it is designed to illustrate lesser known areas of the service’s work, including support for the victims of domestic violence, unemployed offenders and perpetrators of violent crime.

It is the first campaign delivered with the support of external marketing specialists ever undertaken by the probation service in any of its 42 areas in England and Wales. If successful, the Durham model may be applied in other service areas.

David Virgo, Managing Director of Virgo, said: “This has been a very different but exciting campaign to work on. Our team didn’t realise beforehand just how much, and varying work County Durham Probation Service does with both offenders and victims of crime.

“This was also borne out by research we undertook before planning the campaign in which the biggest challenge was devising imagery and copy, which gets the message across without creating a fear of crime among the target audience.

“With the help and support of the probation service I think we’ve managed to strike that balance and I’m sure awareness of the fantastic work it does will be raised among the public.”

Sebert Cox, Chairman of County Durham Probation Board, said: “Through this campaign we hope to raise our public profile so that we are on a level with our criminal justice agency partners, such as the police and the courts. For a long time we have been the silent service, working behind the scenes with adult offenders using programmes and supervision to address offending behaviour and reduce re-offending.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .