The impact and future of violence reduction units

On 8^th March 2023, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published a report examining how well the police tackle serious youth violence. We look at the report and one of the issues it has highlighted: how Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) are used, and how effectively the police work with VRUs and other partner organisations.

Due to an escalating level of youth violence in under privileged areas, a strategy was formed by the Home Office with the goal of arresting this increase and to ensure that there are provisions to reduce the levels as well as putting in place strategies to keep the numbers on a sliding trajectory.

In 2019, the Home Office began funding VRUs in 18 parts of the country identified as having high instances of violent crime. The aim of VRUs was to bring together police, local government, health providers, community leaders and other organisations to address violent crime. They would do this by trying to understand the causes and providing a response in a coordinated way.

In order for funding to be secured by a VRU from the Home Office, it is required to submit a strategic needs assessment, a response strategy and a delivery plan before the start of each financial year.

VRUs are free to set their geographical boundaries but generally they reflect the force area in which they are located and follow the existing partnership structure in their areas. Operational decisions of the VRU rest with all local members and not the police alone.

Information-sharing arrangements are in place. The HMICFRS report found that VRUs have good relationships with voluntary and other organisations, including the police, in comparison to areas that do not have a VRU in place. Police forces and VRUs work with schools to support children at risk of exclusion.

The VRUs covering the Metropolitan Police Service area were praised in the report which noted that there were extensive partnership arrangements in place for addressing serious youth violence. These included: a youth crime management board, a missing and exploited children and young people team, a multi-agency child exploitation team, an extra-familial harm panel, and other fora bringing together police and partner organisations.

While not stating this explicitly, the HMICFRS report indicated that this is the desired model that other VRUs should follow. This praise for the Metropolitan Police’s model may offer some much-needed positivity to the force in the wake of the release of the Casey review which offered a scathing analysis of the Met and emphasised the need for independent oversight.

As VRUs were originally funded on an annual basis, this created difficulties as they were unable to make long-term plans with any certainty. This was rectified in 2022, when the Home Office awarded VRUs a three-year funding grant and a further £64m investment in addition to the £105m that was invested since February 2021. This has provided additional certainty and therefore stability.

While the implementation of VRUs can be viewed as a success by some measures, as set out below it does come with problems. A key theme that runs throughout the HMICFRS report is a lack of consistency in respect of approach, training and communication.

The report notes that some VRUs and community safety partnerships did not have a consistent approach to allocating resources for reducing serious youth violence. This in turn has led to some deploying a scattergun approach to implementing serious youth violence interventions. Some interventions were not evaluated often enough or well enough, or, in some cases, at all, which invariably leads to frustration from some VRUs at the lack of impact in reducing violence in their area. This emphasises a need for officers and staff in VRUs to receive consistent training in order to understand whether their processes for monitoring and evaluating activity is effective – a theme which the report picked up and recommended.

The HMICFRS report also highlights issues caused by complex local government structures, and by relationships between forces, VRUs and schools, and noted that these stakeholders would all benefit from better communication.

There is some early evidence that points to VRUs reducing violent crime. In 2021, the Home Office carried out an evaluation of VRUs. It estimated that between April 2019 and September 2020 41,377 violence without injury offences and 7,636 violence with injury offences were prevented in VRU areas, relative to non-funded areas.

A fundamental take away from the HMICFRS report in relation to VRUs is the need for consistency. Perhaps other VRUs may follow the approach on VRUs and youth offending that is currently employed by the Met Police. As noted, the Home Office appears to have recognised a need to provide funding for a period longer than 12 months, and have decided to provide funding for three years. If the numbers mentioned above can be sustained and replicated across the current VRUs, taking a uniform approach, it should follow that there will be significant reductions in serious youth crime – clearly the very positive outcome we are all working towards.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information on the issues raised in this blog post, please contact a member of our criminal litigation team.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sandra Paul is a Partner in our Criminal Litigation team. She has a wealth of experience in criminal and related litigation. The majority of her work concerns defending allegations of sexual misconduct. She works with clients in the UK and abroad, including allegations following the #MeToo campaign.