WIREDGOV

Offenders are 3.5 times more likely to reduce their interest in starting fires deliberately following treatment in a ground-breaking new programme devised by award-winning researchers from the University of Kent.

Research leading to the first effective treatment for deliberate firesetters has won Professor Theresa Gannon and team a £10,000 award for Outstanding Impact in Society in the 2016 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Celebrating Impact Prize.

Professor Gannon’s research project produced both the first comprehensive theory of deliberate firesetting and the first standardised treatment for the 1,500 deliberate firesetters convicted in England and Wales each year. 

Criminal firesetting in the UK causes 65 casualties or deaths every week and costs over £40 million. “Prior to our research there was little understanding of the motivations for starting fires and no standardised treatment,” Professor Theresa Gannon explains.

Her new Multi-Trajectory Theory of Adult Firesetting, which for the first time includes women as well as men, identifies that firesetters are a psychologically distinctive group that require specialist treatment to target their unique needs. Based on five offender subtypes of behaviour, researchers devised a six-month treatment programme. They also developed two treatment manuals for prison and mentally ill firesetters and training for more than 450 UK based professionals who are now offering treatment nationally across 30 UK hospitals.

During the six-month treatment programme, professionals now develop an ‘offence chain’ that acts as an early warning system to help the offender act differently in future. The programme also tackles issues including anger management, fire safety awareness and attitudes towards firesetting.

The treatment programme now plays a central role in the care, sentence planning  and discharge, and parole decisions of the 150 UK firesetters who have completed the programme to date. More convicted firesetters are now meeting criteria for release or transfer to less secure establishments.

Dr Peter Beazley, Head of Secure Inpatient Psychology, South Essex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said; “All the participants really benefitted from the Firesetting Intervention Programme for Mentally Disordered Offenders (FIP-MO), and their feedback was extremely positive. Since the programme, most of the participants have moved on to the community and are doing well.” 

Internationally, the treatment programme is used by probation officers in Australia and this year more than 100 practitioners will take part in the programme in North America – the first programme of its kind in those countries.

“In the past professionals working in this area really were at a loss to know what to do with firesetters,” Professor Gannon points out. “As a result, they were not able to help them move back safely into society. Now, we have a very clear pathway for treating these individuals which is being rolled out nationally and internationally.”

The ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize recognises and rewards the successes of ESRC-funded researchers who have achieved, or are currently achieving, outstanding economic and societal impacts. Praising the work of Professor Gannon and her team, the judging panel pointed to ‘compelling evidence’ that this research has made a ‘strong impact on both users and wider society by setting up a standardised and effective treatment programme that helps firesetters alter their behaviour and meets a need not previously addressed’.

Case study and video

• Case study: Pioneering treatment for firesetters

Notes for editors

1. Professor Theresa Gannon and team won the Outstanding Impact in Society category in the 2016 ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize and received a prize award of £10,000. Professor Gannon is from the Centre of Research and Education in Forensic Psychology (CORE-FP), School of Psychology, University of Kent. Co-team members from the University of Kent are Dr Emma Alleyne, Dr Magali Barnoux, Dr Caoilte Ó Ciardha and Dr Nichola Tyler.
2. The ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize is an annual opportunity to recognise and reward the successes of ESRC-funded researchers who have achieved, or are currently achieving, outstanding economic and societal impacts. First run in 2013 and now in its fourth year, the prize celebrates collaborative working, partnerships, engagement and knowledge exchange activities that have led to significant impact of ESRC-funded research. In addition to the prize for Outstanding Impact in Society, prizes were presented in four other categories: Outstanding Early Career Impact, Outstanding International Impact, Outstanding Impact in Public Policy and Impact Champion.
3. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK’s largest funder of research on the social and economic questions facing us today. It supports the development and training of the UK’s future social scientists and also funds major studies that provide the infrastructure for research. ESRC-funded research informs policymakers and practitioners and helps make businesses, voluntary bodies and other organisations more effective. The ESRC also works collaboratively with six other UK research councils and Innovate UK to fund cross-disciplinary research and innovation addressing major societal challenges. The ESRC is an independent organisation, established by Royal Charter in 1965, and funded mainly by the Government.
4. Established in 1965, the University of Kent – the UK’s European university – now has almost 20,000 students across campuses or study centres at Canterbury, Medway, Tonbridge, Brussels, Paris, Athens and Rome.
   It has been ranked: third for overall student satisfaction in the 2014 National Student Survey; 16th in the Guardian University Guide 2016; 23rd in theTimes and Sunday Times University Guide 2016; and 22nd in the Complete University Guide 2015.
   In the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2015-16, Kent is in the top 10 per cent of the world’s leading universities for international outlook and 66th in its table of the most international universities in the world. The THE also ranked the University as 20th in its ‘Table of Tables’ 2016.
   Kent is ranked 17th in the UK for research intensity (REF 2014). It has world-leading research in all subjects and 97% of its research is deemed by the REF to be of international quality.
   Along with the universities of East Anglia and Essex, Kent is a member of theEastern Arc Research Consortium.
   The University is worth £0.7 billion to the economy of the south east and supports more than 7,800 jobs in the region. Student off-campus spend contributes £293.3 million and 2,532 full-time-equivalent jobs to those totals.
   In 2014, Kent received its second Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education.