By Lib Peck, Director – London’s Violence Reduction Unit
‘Lawless London’ scream the Trumpian-inspired headlines that are driven by algorithmic amplification and given free-reign to flood social media feeds. The response from columnists and echo chambers online, cry out for more police and longer prison sentences. It’s what we’ve heard consistently in London, a city flooded by disinformation and by those who want to profit – either financially, politically, or both – by talking it down. It doesn’t seem to matter that the statistics tell a very different story.
For example, what algorithms won’t push is the fact that last year, London recorded the lowest level of homicides since records began and that the number of young people murdered was the lowest this century. Knife crime is also falling in the capital, with more than 1,800 fewer victims in the last 12 months.
But what’s behind that progress? Seven years ago, the Mayor took a bold decision to take a longer-term approach by setting up London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in the belief that you can’t simply arrest your way out of violence.
Of course, police engagement and enforcement plays an important role, but it has been the impact of prevention, about the range of interventions that take place across the capital, that is different about London’s approach. The VRU has invested in interventions for more than half a million young people: from oracy and healthy relationship lessons in schools to specialised interventions for those kids already caught up in violence; from after-school activities to youth workers in hospital diverting those receiving medical care for violent injuries from further involvement; from championing teachers and educationalists to embed inclusive education, to upskilling more than 500 youth workers.
Less statistically tangible, but of equal importance is the convening of statutory and non-statutory partnerships, sharing best practice and building social infrastructure.
The result: compared to when the VRU was set up in 2019, there has been a more than 50% reduction in young people admitted to hospital for knife assault. That’s 50% less victims. So what London is doing is showing strong signs of progress.
Of course, statistics are not the only indicator of violence. They cannot mask the horror of violence as experienced by those families, friends and communities who have lost someone. Last year may have been a record low for murder, but still seven teenage Londoners were killed – lives full of potential cut short. In a compassionate society, the personal impacts of violence should never be normalised. Whether felt by the affected community, or read off the page, the human impact fuels safety concerns. And Londoners do not feel safer or, indeed, always safe.
So the challenge is complex: how to tell a story of prevention amid grief, with a political norm that tends towards enforcement, and within a deeply polarised society that often eschews facts.
With seven years’ experience of pioneering a public health approach through the London VRU, and with a new Prime Minister committed to the idea of a ‘preventative state’, a phrase he used in his first speech as PM, what are the key ingredients of prevention that need baking into the new government’s approach?
Partnerships. An easy buzz word to say, partnership is so much harder in practice. But it is an essential ingredient. Yes, there is a role for statutory partnerships from schools and healthcare providers through to the probation service and the police in violence reduction and a clear regional role to mobilise around common objectives, data and messaging. All of this now exists. But too often partnership is still evidenced as a ‘board job’: putting relevant representative organisations round the table and assuming that alone is enough. The much harder bit is how to genuinely equalise and share power. It is driven through culture, not process, with people and relationships at its heart. At the VRU we have worked to elevate the voice of young people who too often are absent from the discussions directly affecting them; and the experience of youth workers – for too long ignored and not considered as professionals despite holding the trusted relationship with young people. We have done so by paying for their specialist time, genuinely co-producing strategies, working alongside our Young People’s Action Group and Youth Practitioners’ Advisory Board.
Place. While London is the best city in the world, its streets are not paved with gold. 11 out of 50 of the UK’s most deprived wards are in London. Unsurprisingly, violence is also discriminatory, with 70% of violence occurring in only 1% of the capital. So how do we target neighbourhoods in the right way? How do we elevate and empower the knowledge and experience of people who live and work in an area? Crime prevention and reduction may be a national challenge, but what experience has shown in London is that it needs a decidedly local solution supported by a regional approach. The London VRU’s MyEnds programme is community-led, neighbourhood determined, with long-term investment across nine neighbourhoods around London and it is evidencing positive results. Manchester VRU has a similar approach but it is in the context of different local challenges. A key part of this success is that while relationships are held at a local level, the strategic clout, long-term Mayoral investment, the capability to determine London’s needs, to share research, learning and best practice, and enable people and projects, is held at a regional level.
Investment. The drivers of violence are big, societal issues – poverty, discrimination, alienation, deprivation – that need long-term strategies and investment. The Mayor has championed the London VRU with multi-year funding; without it we would not have managed to answer the frequent complaint from local councils, VCS organisations and the youth sector that short-term funding leads to bad commissioning and damages community relations. Here’s hoping that the new Prime Minister’s accelerated drive towards devolution corrects the false economy that 10-year government strategies can somehow be addressed by one-year government funding. And that a more confident government can finally begin to escape the loop of ‘pilotitis’ – endless small-scale trials that never go anywhere – and instead draw on the qualitative and quantitative evidence that exists to take what we know works and connect, grow and genuinely scale it’.
Prevention is hard and it’s not a quick easy fix – that’s why so many commentators and politicians opt for enforcement. Weapons bins and the blunting of knives serve a purpose, but let’s not kid ourselves and suggest it’s serving the purpose. Proper prevention works; London is demonstrating that. Let’s hope that the new government can line up all the lessons, the learning, the evidence, as it is all there. And let’s hope it can commit to prevention with confidence and courage.
