The 1990s saw a growing preoccupation with high risk offenders (Kemshall & Wood: 2009). Many areas had started to develop their own inter-agency arrangements before being formalized by the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. (Canton, 2011: 136). This followed the shift taken from Probation from 'treatment' to 'punishment' (Raynor & Vanstone, 2007). Bottoms (1995) called this era the 'populist punitiveness', where there was a shift in a number of legislative and policy reforms and emphasis was placed on punitive sentencing as opposed to a more holistic approach focusing on treatment and rehabilitation (Bottoms 1995 cited in Pratt 2007: 2).
The Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 1991 saw reform aimed at reducing the prison population by sentencing offenders for the crime committed without considering the number of previous offenses. Sexual and violent offenders however, were excluded from this proportionality of sentencing, and the risk and seriousness posed by these offenders was taken into account, allowing Judges and Magistrates to impose maximum sentences on the risk of potential harm posed by the offender; regardless of the seriousness of the index offense itself (Nash, 2003:61). .
Following on from this, the 1997 Sex Offenders Act was the first piece of legislation which meant that the Police and Probation were required to work together to monitor sex offenders (Kemshall & Wood 2009:27). In 1998, the Crime and Disorder Act was passed, which placed a legal duty on Police and local authorities to undertake crime audits and work alongside voluntary and private sectors to address any concerns in regards to crime (Pycroft & Gough, 2010:112). Although this was hailed as the peak of the development of a multi-agency approach to crime, it had little impact on Probations main focus (Pycroft & Gough, 2010:113). Sections 67 and 68 of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 created Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).