Learning the right lessons on knife crime
With knife crime sadly on the rise again in London people are naturally looking to other cities for inspiration. But are we focusing on the wrong lessons?
In Glasgow, a holistic approach to reducing violence has been achieving some impressive results. The Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) was established in 2005 to help tackle the epidemic of knife crime and other violence that had seen Glasgow named as Europe’s murder capital. The unit’s motto is that “violence is preventable, not inevitable” and it oversees a portfolio of activities across a range of policy areas.
For example, in West Glasgow, the Street & Arrow cafe employs ex-offenders to help them to gain vital work experience as well as a new set of relationships outside the gangs. Meanwhile, a group of local doctors have produced a shocking 15-minute film called Your Choice that highlights the devastating consequences of a knife attack, and is used in classrooms to stimulate a debate. Then there’s the adventure and leadership course that helps former gang members gain confidence and new skills.
What lessons can we learn from the Glasgow experience? A typical response is to focus on the successful activities. If we can codify these interventions, describing their important features, then we can replicate the same practices elsewhere. This makes sense intuitively, but often fails to achieve the desired results. It turns out that replication is much harder than it appears.
There are a whole range of possible reasons why this is the case but put simply, it is often very difficult to understand exactly why a particular intervention achieved the results it did. To take just one example from Glasgow, perhaps it was the specific design of the adventure and leadership course that made the difference, or maybe it was the inspirational vision of Brigadier David Allfrey, the former commander of 51st Scottish Brigade who conceived of and now runs the programme. Or maybe it was the unique partnership with the military that offered course participants the opportunity to take part in the world famous Edinburgh Tattoo. Or maybe it was a combination of all these factors, and others, interacting with each other in complex ways all set in a unique local context.
Rather than focusing so much on the specifics of what Glasgow did I think it is more important to understand how they did it. What were the enabling factors in place that allowed these different, locally developed solutions to emerge?
Certainly the holistic philosophy seems to be important, treating knife crime as a broader societal issue rather than a narrow matter of crime and policing. Then there’s the close working relationships that were established between the different groups and organisations involved, sharing information, building trust and being willing to learn from one another. Finally, the importance of empathy and seeking to engage with gang members on a human level.
Focusing on replicating these, and other, enabling factors, rather than a set of discrete activities, encourages locally appropriate ideas to emerge and increases the chances of success as well as the sense of local ownership and legitimacy. At CPI we call this the enablement mindset. This doesn’t mean ignoring the lessons from successful programmes, just not blindly trying to cut-and-paste “what works”.
