CRIME PREVENTION
Not only does it cause a problem from a financial point of view, but you’re abstracting police officers from other communities and other jobs.” A College of Policing briefing on knife crime found an approach, such as the SVRU’s, of prevention at the earliest opportunity and multi-agency working, was the most effective. It said the focus on preventing the onset and progression of violence, rehabilitating offenders, and changing attitudes and behaviours on a societal level had achieved results. New, innovative and joined-up ways to
tackle violence are showing early signs of success in London, where the number of homicides fell in 2022, and teenage killings were halved. But work must continue. As Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said, every death is “one too many”.
RESOURCES
• For more information on the Beating Crime Plan, go to:
www.gov.uk/government/ publications/beating-crime-plan/ beating-crime-plan#chapter-2- -cutting-homicide-serious- violence-and-neighbourhood- crime
• To read more about the Homicide Prevention Framework, go to:
www.college.police.uk/ homicide-prevention
• To listen to the College of Policing’s Inside Policing podcast, go to:
www.open.spotify.com/ show/0iFjSyq9KAzGjuV2b0JnWx
including Essex, where detectives carry out rapid debriefs when a killing has been narrowly avoided, and in Thames Valley, where data is used to deploy officers in places where violence is most likely. One part of the UK that has already achieved a significant reduction in homicide is Scotland. Last year, 53 people were killed in Scotland – the
lowest level since records began in 1976. “By the early 2000s, Scotland was seen
as being the most violent country in the developed world,” says Niven Rennie, who was, until December 2022, the director of Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU). In an interview with the College of
“The framework is designed to be a comprehensive one- stop shop, where everyone can find all the materials, resources, guidance, and research in one place”
Policing’s Inside Policing podcast, to be released this month, Rennie explained how he recognised the response to homicide could not be left to law enforcement alone: “The police response to it was a traditional police response... having large amounts of police officers with yellow jackets out and about to try and alleviate the problem.”
“We discovered that doesn’t work,” Rennie continued. “Yes, for a while, when you throw that amount of police resource at it, you might suppress the problem, but the problem doesn’t go away, because you haven’t dealt with the root causes and you can’t sustain that level of activity.
41 | POLICE | FEBRUARY 2023
• For more information about the College of Policing’s briefing on knife crime, go to:
www.college.
police.uk/guidance/knife-crime- evidence-briefing/interventions- reduce-knife-crime
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