Facing a surge in youth knife crime, London's Metropolitan Police are seeking inspiration from Scotland's groundbreaking Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU). The SVRU, established in 2005 after Glasgow earned the grim title of 'Europe's murder capital', has implemented innovative public health approaches that have dramatically reduced homicides. This article explores the SVRU's success story, highlighting its key strategies, including 'call ins' targeting gang members, focusing on early intervention and prevention, and reducing school exclusions.
With young men continuing to die from knife crime on London 's streets, police are learning from Scotland , which has dramatically reduced its homicide rate. Glasgow has reduced knife crime by targeting gang members at the dentist or hospital, and reducing school exclusions . Earlier this month Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Met Police , described in gruesome detail what a working day can look like for his officers.
They sometimes go home “covered in blood”, he said, because they’ve tried to “stop a teenager bleeding out” on a double-decker bus in Woolwich. Another teen, 15-year-old Daejun Campbell, was killed the same way in the same borough not long before. Rowley expressed a fear that the death of young Black men on London’s streets was becoming normalized. He bemoaned a lack of “collective effort” and called on ministers, local authorities, community groups and charities to “get around the table”. “How on earth,” he asked, “can probably the world’s greatest city not do better on this?” is one that many of us are currently asking. And any search for how to “do better”; for innovative solutions to knife crime leads straight to Scotland and the work of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU), which was founded in 2005 after WHO had dubbed Glasgow ‘the murder capital of Europe’. In 2005, there were 152 homicides in Scotland. There were 170 street gangs across Glasgow, with as many as 3,500 members aged between 11 and 23. Someone was given the ‘Glasgow Smile’ on its city streets every six hours, a horrific, life-altering facial wound: a cut from the corners of the mouth right up to the ears. The SVRU was initially led by John Carnochan, former Detective Chief Superintendent with Strathclyde Police, and forensic psychologist Karyn McCluskey. “They said they were going to lock themselves in a dark room before they went back out to deliver,” says Jimmy Paul. There was no question that they needed to come up with something new. Detection wasn’t the problem here – there was a 98 per cent detection rate, but filling the cells, the courts and the jails wasn’t working. “Flooding the areas with yellow coats didn’t stop violence, it just shifted it down the road. The approach that Carnochan and McCluskey devised was preventative, a public health approach,” he says as an infection – and work on causes, interrupting transmission and changing behaviour. “The crucial part was galvanising everyone – judges, teachers, parents, doctors, dentists, carers, youth workers – to help them see that everyone has a role to play.” One of its early policies was the ‘call in’. “The police knew who belonged to gangs,” say Paul. “They were all approached, and asked to be in the high court on a certain day at a certain time.” Much to everyone’s surprise, many turned up. “The court was full of young men.”. “It was a subtle message to show, ‘We know what you’re doing’,” says Paul. A chief constable spoke, saying they knew who they were and were going to come down hard. Another speaker was a former gang member, then the mother of a murder victim. A facial surgeon spoke about the Glasgow Smile – and how every time they attended an emergency like that, another baby with a cleft palate went to the bottom of the queue. Every man in that room was told they could have help and support to change their lives and exit gang culture and given contact numbers to call. Through various interventions, homicides in Scotland have dropped over the years. The ‘call ins’ were just one element. McCluskey stressed that there was no single solution to violence, you chip around the problem with small actions until eventually, you reach its heart. Another focus was school exclusions and how to prevent them as research shows clearly that they set people on a criminal path: one in two of the prison population were excluded from school. Another was seizing ‘teachable moments’, the times where a gang member might be most open to turning life around. This could be on the dentist’s chair during dental reconstruction, in the hospital bed recovering from a knife wound. An intervention at this point by a youth worker, a mentor, or a specially trained dentist, doctor, or nurse can open the door to a new start. The results were startling. Violent offending, weapon possession and gang fighting all dropped. In 2005, when SVRU was founded, there were 152 homicides in Scotland. Last year, there were only 50. However, the search for new approaches never stops. One of the SVRU’s newer projects, ‘Quit Fighting For Likes’ addresses the filming and sharing of violent incidents on social media. Another focus is the early years of infancy. “One in four grow up in poverty in Scotland and violence is concentrated in those living in deep poverty, addiction, and the care system
Knife Crime Scotland SVRU Violence Reduction Glasgow London Met Police Gang Violence Public Health Prevention School Exclusions Early Intervention
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