Northumbria PCC’s response to the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) Inquiry on the progress made by the Serious Violence Strategy (SVS)
29th August 2018
Overview: In this consultation response, information was provided on the progress made by Northumbria Police on tackling serious violence, as well as the PCC’s views to whether or not the Serious Violence Strategy has been effective and the PCC’s recommendations on how to improve the success of the SVS.
Summary:
- The Serious Violence Strategy (SVS) focuses on knife crimes, homicide, gun crimes, acid attacks, drug trafficking and gangs. The relatively narrow scope and the omission of domestic abuse, serious sexual abuse, alcohol related violence and violence against women and girls prevents it from being a comprehensive strategy to deal with serious violent crime.
- There are very low levels of multiple crimes mentioned in the SVS in Northumbria, including knife crime, the criminal use of firearms, drug trafficking and gang activity, but the force have significant resources to respond to these types of crimes and have successfully done so in the past. The force contributes to national operations (e.g. Operation Sceptre) which regards knife crimes, has well established approaches to deal with firearms and ‘threats to life’, and utilises its most experienced investigative staff to deal with homicide and Tier 1 organised crime.
- A new approach to Integrated Offender Management has been developed and Home Office funding has been secured to develop a new multi-agency approach to diverting young people away from Serious and Organised Crime (SOC).
- The SVS presents national crime trends as consistently relevant across all regions, however, this is not the case. With Northumbria having very low levels of most of the crimes the strategy regards, there are aims to tailor the plan to local crime threat and prevent serious crime trends from developing further in Northumbria.
- The strategy contains a great deal of ‘preventive’ consideration. In order to be truly successful in such approaches we need a multi-agency approach and to ensure true collaboration, commitment and accountability in all areas including in prisons. The preventive approach need to be broken down into three areas which will together combat serious violence crimes: intelligence, diversion and enforcement.
- Government funding cuts and the decrease in budgets will obviously have a major impact on law enforcement, including combatting serious violence crimes. Investing to prevent domestic and sexual abuse, and also substance abuse, would be useful to Northumbria as these issues are more significant locally.
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