Scale of problem
The findings, published earlier this year in the report Still Not Safe, reveal that nearly three quarters of local authorities did not include estimates on the numbers of children involved in youth violence in their joint strategic needs assessments (JSNAs). Those areas that did used a mix of measures such as offences against the person, figures for crimes against children, reoffending rates, and summoning, charging and custody rates.
The exclusive focus on criminal justice indicators meant authorities “missed other important measures such as ambulance call outs or A&E attendances relating to child victims of violent assaults”, the report adds, “undermining the potential to accurately measure the problem and design services to meet local needs.”
A previous OCC report, Keeping Kids Safe, analysed the scale of gang involvement by young people. It cites British Crime Survey data that suggests 27,000 children in England identified as being a member of a gang. Its own analysis showed more than 300,000 10- to 17-year-olds knew someone in a street gang, 33,000 children were a sibling of a gang member and 34,000 had been a victim of a violent crime in the previous 12 months, three quarters of whom were not known to authorities.
The OCC undertook research for Still Not Safethat identified exclusion and attending alternative provision education as key risk factors for gang involvement – gang-associated children are five times more likely to have had a permanent exclusion in the previous year and six times more likely to be in alternative provision. “Successive serious case reviews (in which gangs have been a factor) have highlighted the tragic consequences of these risks where children have been victims of serious harm or have lost their lives,” the report states. “In most cases, the children had chaotic and unstable home lives, frequent but usually sporadic contact with different agencies and a complex set of emotional health issues.”
Despite this established link between school dropout and gang involvement, only 38 per cent of councils tracked the number of children outside mainstream education, the report states. The quarter of councils quantifying levels of youth violence were using risk indicators like family members convicted of an offence, victims of criminal exploitation and missing from home episodes. According to the OCC, these indicated a “better understanding of the drivers for youth violence, and a better strategic response in these authorities”.
Violence can take many forms, but there has been increased concern about the number of youth-related incidents involving knives. Since January 2009, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) has asked children aged 10 to 15 living in private households in England and Wales about their experience of crime in the previous 12 months. In the year ending March 2018, 6.5 per cent of 10- to 15-year-olds knew someone who carried a knife, although less than one per cent of respondents indicated that they carried a knife.
When it comes to understanding the reasons for carrying knives, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on knife crime spoke to 16 young people who had been convicted of a knife offence or victim of a volent crime. Many of the young people said they carried knives for protection and for some it was the norm. Being part of a group that carried knives offered camaraderie and a sense of belonging, the APPG found. They also talked about how viewing violent videos online had a desensitising effect and that gangs used social media to glamorise violence and recruit vulnerable young people.
Ministry of Justice data on knife and offensive weapons sentences for children shows there has been a fall each year since 2017/18, including a near 25 per cent fall in 2020/21 (see graphics). Community service made up half of all sentences and custody seven per cent. In total, 19 per cent of all knife-related sentences were given to children.
From 2015-20, the annual number of homicides by a sharp instrument rose from 20 to 23 among under-18s. However, the number involving 18- to 24-year-olds more than doubled from 38 to 78. The proportion of all homicides with a sharp instrument that involve under-25s now stands at 37 per cent, compared with 27 per cent in 2015. The highest rise – 50 per cent – for victim ethnicity was seen in white 18- to 24-year-olds.
NHS records show there has been a decline in the number of under-16s and 16- to 17-year-olds treated in English hospitals due to assault by a sharp object over the past three years, from a high of 849 in 2018/19 to 694 last year.
The Youth Violence Commission’s final report in July 2020 estimated that the economic and social costs of youth violence stood at £11bn over the previous 11 years, with some regions experiencing a 50 per cent rise in these costs since 2014/15 as a result of rising levels of youth violence. The calculations include police, criminal justice and health costs as well as the impact on victims and lost economic output.
The commission, a joint collaboration between academics, a cross-party group of MPs and UK Youth, concludes: “These are staggering numbers, which reflect the devastating impact of serious youth violence.”
Policy response
In response over rising concerns about levels of youth violence, there have been a series of government policies and initiatives in recent years.
The Serious Violence Strategy was published in April 2018. It identified six different pots of funding. These include:
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£17m for a new Early Intervention Youth Fund.
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£2m for a “Community Fund” across 2018/19 and 2019/20.
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£3.6m funding for the National Crime Agency and National Police Chiefs Council to develop a National County Lines Co-ordination Centre.
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£40m of Big Lottery funding, delivered through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to boost local open access youth provision in six areas.
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£90m of dormant accounts money to support disadvantaged and disengaged young people with their transition to work.
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£13m over four years for the Trusted Relationships Fund to pilot approaches which provide support to young people at risk of child sexual exploitation, gang exploitation and peer abuse.
Subsequently, the government announced:
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£200m for a Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), a 10-year programme overseen by the Home Office that will invest in interventions steering young people away from involvement in violent crime.
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A £5m “Supporting Families Against Youth Crime” fund, overseen by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
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£2m for a research unit to look at child exploitation, trafficking, modern slavery and child sexual exploitation, overseen by the Department for Education.
The Serious Violence Strategy also contained substantial research showing the need to invest in early intervention, prevention and therapeutic approaches to reducing youth violence. In particular, the report highlighted the effectiveness of pre-school programmes and multi-systemic therapy for families of children aged 12-17 with behaviour problems.
The strategy is one of a number of policy initiatives to identify the importance of health services for reducing violence. However, the OCC’s Keeping Kids Safereport states it found no evidence that neither NHS England, Public Health England nor the Department of Health and Social Care “have taken steps to ensure that advice is translated into services being commissioned by health bodies in local areas”.
A similar problem exists in the Department for Education, according to the OCC. The DfE’s Working Together statutory guidance has been updated to include greater emphasis on the threat posed by gangs and criminal exploitation and the importance of early help to address these, while reforms to local safeguarding children boards were introduced to better join up responses across agencies. However, the OCC says council children services departments have not received the necessary funds to deliver sufficient early help provision to tackle youth violence on the ground.
Translating these numerous national-level initiatives into practical change to improve the lives of vulnerable children is undermined by fragmentation between the numerous different project streams and between government departments, the OCC says.
It states: “While the Home Office leads on county lines, gang violence and criminal exploitation, the government’s own research suggests that it is health and family-level interventions which have the greatest impact, and the DfE holds the national lead for protecting children. While the Home Office has established the Serious Violence Taskforce to bring together ministers from key departments with other stakeholders, this taskforce now has to bring about the cohesive national action plan which was envisaged when it launched.”
Home Office funding
Earlier this year, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced funding to invest in projects to tackle youth violence as part of a £130m package. This included £23m for early intervention programmes such as youth workers in hospitals, £30m for police targeted enforcement and £35m for violence reduction units (VRU) in England to divert young people at risk of being involved in violence.
In July, the Home Office published the Beating Crime Plan that included an extra £17m for VRUs to provide high-intensity therapeutic and specialist support from youth workers, including at crisis points such as when a young person is being admitted to hospital A&E departments with a knife injury or upon arrest, to divert them away from violence. A further £45m will be provided for education settings to pay for mental health professionals, family workers, and speech and language therapists in mainstream schools and alternative provision in serious violence hotspots to support young people at risk of involvement in violence to re-engage in education.
The plan will also see the removal of restrictions on how police employ stop-and-search powers – these were introduced in 2014 to tackle their disproportionate use against people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. This, dovetailed with controversial measures in the Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill for “stronger” youth community sentencing options, including greater use of location monitoring and longer daily curfews, has raised concerns among campaigners that the government is pursuing a punitive agenda.
The Youth Select Committee said the bill “works to extend punitive measures and could take more steps to enshrine preventative measures into law”. Changes to stop and search powers will also do nothing to reduce the disproportionately high number of black young men in the justice system, the committee of young people added. The Association of Youth Offending Team Managers adds that the bill could “adversely affect” some groups including non-white British children and children in care.
“This bill does not take into account the significant needs of children within the justice system and does not recognise the impact this will have on equality for all children and could lead to significant groups of children being adversely affected,” its response states.
Meanwhile, the National Youth Agency said in its response to the bill that more needs to be done to support young people in the community, including funding to train and recruit 10,000 new qualified youth workers, 40,000 trained adult volunteers and 20,000 young people up-skilled as entry-level youth workers.
Practice developments
With at least six government departments funding work tackling youth violence, there is a wide variety of approaches being trialled and tested with some being rolled out nationally. They range from school-based education programmes about the risks of youth violence through to diversion schemes at the point of injury or arrest.
The YEF’s latest funding round, called A Supportive Home – Helping Families to Overcome Challenges, will invest in parenting programmes, including those for foster carers and residential care workers to help children and parents develop positive behaviours. Family therapy schemes, initiatives to reduce conflict between parents and children, as well as domestic abuse prevention programmes will also be backed.
An earlier round of the programme focused on backing up to 20 diversion programmes that support children and young people aged 10-17 at high risk of offending. Family support, therapeutic interventions and restorative justice schemes are some of the initiatives that could benefit from the £10-20m available.
Innovation investment
The aim of the YEF is to invest in promising innovative schemes that can demonstrate impact and so be scaled up. Earlier this year, it published the Evidence and Gap Map, a free online tool that collates and analyses evidence related to preventing youth violence, organising this by theme, intervention and type of outcome so that users can see the strength of the evidence (see research evidence).
There are 18 VRUs in England that bring together a range of organisations – including police, local government, health, education, community leaders and other key partners – to understand the root causes of serious violence and provide a co-ordinated strategic response to help drive it down (see expert view, below).
Each VRU is taking an individual approach based on local need, often co-ordinating local partners, developing strategies and harnessing existing initiatives. They use their local knowledge to inform commissioning of evidence-based interventions. For example, VRUs in London and the Midlands have invested in hospital youth work programmes that engage victims of violence at the “teachable moment” when they are being treated for their injuries. These schemes are being delivered by charities Redthread and St Giles Trust and follow a public health model of tackling crime, an approach that has been successful in reducing violence in Scotland.
Other initiatives funded by VRUs include Insight and Blunt Truth education programmes developed for use in schools and youth groups by Avon & Somerset Police VRU (see practice example) and the Social Switch delivered by charities Catch22 and Redthread (see practice example). Initially funded by Google and now by the Mayor of London’s VRU, the Social Switch aims to work with young people who have used social media to threaten others and instead encourage them into positive activities.
There are many other initiatives developing innovative approaches to supporting young people at risk of being the victim and perpetrator of violent crime. Campaigners and children’s services leaders say what is needed now is for best practice to be widely shared and long-term funding secured so that these approaches can be properly embedded across England and incidents of violence involving young people continue their recent fall.
EXPERT VIEW VIOLENCE REDUCTION UNITS TACKLE THE CAUSES OF YOUTH VIOLENCE
By Keith Fraser, chair, Youth Justice Board for England & Wales
Evidence tells us a child first approach is effective in addressing the offending behaviour of the small number of children within the youth justice system, and in preventing offending by those who are more likely to enter it. The children who remain in the system are frequently those with the most pronounced needs, facing multiple complex challenges.
It’s important we understand the drivers for serious violence – where children may be the perpetrator, victim and sometimes both.
Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) have an incredibly important role to play in supporting the prevention of offending. They are also an important example of effective partnership working at a local level. They bring together organisations who really understand, and can respond to, local issues relating to the underlying causes of serious violence. VRUs also offer a chance to develop and build an evidence base for what works.
We know joined-up interventions, informed by the best research, are key in preventing offending and reoffending. We’re working with partners to develop what the evidence base looks like in practice – for example, with the Youth Endowment Fund on their serious violence Toolkit. We are also supporting frontline service improvement through pathfinders, where services can pilot, develop and disseminate solutions.
One example is a programme in the West Midlands called “Kitchen Table Talks” overseen by the West Midlands VRU, in conjunction with seven West Midlands youth offending teams. This project is creating and facilitating community-based, parental peer support networks that can be accessed by parents with children known to, or at risk of, involvement with the youth justice system. The aim is to contribute to the reduction of serious youth violence across the areas and is related to a theory of change which aims to demonstrate that positive engagement of parents – through increasing their skills and resilience – will lead to better support for their child.
We’re all working for the best outcomes for children who come into contact with the justice system, and we know relationships create positive change. The work of VRUs is key to this.
EXPERT VIEW GIVE POLICE THE TOOLS TO TARGET OFFENDERS
By Mike Ryan, author and expert on gang violence
In 2020, I wrote a controversial book about the gang problems that plague towns and cities throughout the UK. Titled Raised to Kill it sets out to explain how gangs recruit, operate and go about their criminal activities – and, more importantly, how we can counter them.
However, there is a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed before we can negate gang culture – and that relates to how our criminal justice system operates.
Our criminal justice system is struggling to cope with the demands that are placed on it – especially in relation to youth crime – and in its current form it is unfit for purpose. To give the public more confidence in its efforts, it was recently announced that the government would be seeking an increase in prisons tariffs and an escalation in police stop and search operations.
Increasing prison tariffs I feel would be a welcome step forward, as current punitive and deterrent prison sentences are far too lenient. Almost every ex-gang member that I know who has reformed, has only done so after serving a lengthy prison sentence. By their own admission short sentences were just inconveniences.
In the case of young people getting caught carrying knives I believe that they should be made to undertake intense residential anti-knife education programmes, rather than being sent to prison. I also firmly believe that we need to start teaching children about gang culture as early as primary school, as our children need to be street smart and gang aware before they start secondary school.
Stop and search can be a useful tool in certain circumstances, but ineffective and counterproductive when used en masse under Section 60 orders that allow police officers to stop and search individuals without any grounds of suspicion.
Instead, why don’t they use AI (artificial intelligence) camera software that monitors kinesics, as that has the ability to detect unusual nuances in body movements. For instance, a person carrying a knife or gun is likely to move in a more animated manner, which would be detected by AI technology leading to a more justified intelligence-based stop and search.
Such software can also analyse an individual’s height, body mass and gait, making targeting far more effective – as it is based on body movements and not stereotypes.
In summary, we need to think far more out of the box, as current policing methods are not working, and we need to bridge not alienate communities.
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Mike Ryan spent eight years working in gang intervention services. His book Raised to Kill is available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle
EXPERT VIEW CHARITY USES LIVED EXPERIENCE TO DIVERT YOUNG OFFENDERS
By Junior Smart, SOS founder, St Giles Trust
St Giles offers direct, intensive help for young people caught up in criminal exploitation with issues around weapons crime, serious violence and county lines.
The backbone of our work is our peer-led approach; developing and using people with lived experience; those who have come from the same communities or have similar backgrounds or experiences to the young people we are working with.
Tackling serious violence requires a radical approach – adopting what has gone before will not improve the situation. We aim to represent something different through our peer-led approach. What’s more we are independent, non-judgmental and not perceived as part of authority.
As well as our intervention work, the SOS+ programme delivers preventative sessions in educational settings on violence, vulnerability and exploitation. We use trained professionals with lived experience of the criminal justice system to de-glamorise gang involvement and expose the harsh realities of crime and violence.
We know that due to Covid-19, there are many young people who have "slipped under the radar" and need our support to exit county lines involvement. These children are invisible and at immense risk. It is vital we identify, engage and provide them with the support they need. This means enhanced collaboration between different agencies, information sharing and a consistent approach across the UK – gangs don’t respect local authority boundaries.
With so many of our clients having experienced trauma, there is an urgent need for specialist support services to address mental health needs experienced by young people caught up in criminal exploitation.
Our own recent research reveals we spend 200 hours on average with each client. Positive outcomes are just not achieved with brief interventions. The funding landscape needs to reflect this.
More help should be provided to parents and caregivers affected by child criminal exploitation and a recognition that they can be the best long-term support structure that a young person can get.
Finally, we need to be aware that the gangs are often one step ahead and constantly changing tactics to avoid detection. It is vital for policymakers to listen to the charities working on the frontline such as St Giles, as we are the ones who are often first to know and can bring workable solutions.
