22 February 2008
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced a plan for tackling violent crime – just three days ahead of a National Audit Office report warning that the government lacked a long-term strategic approach to the problem.
The NAO found that levels of violent crime had fallen by 9% since 2002/03. But incidents of serious violence had fallen less sharply, down by 5.9% over the same period.
In a report published on February 21, the NAO also criticised the Home Office's inconsistent delivery of funding, poor data sharing between local agencies and limited capacity at a local level to analyse the risks of violent crime. It said these factors were combining to reduce the effectiveness of wider efforts to reduce violent crime.
Many local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships did not take a strategic approach to reducing violent crime in their areas. Fewer than 30% of the partnerships – which bring together police, local authorities and other agencies – had a written strategy for tackling violence, the NAO found.
Public Accounts Committee chair Edward Leigh said: 'The Home Office has been of limited effectiveness in dealing with violent crime. So far the department has failed to take a long-term, strategic approach. That must change.'
Smith pre-empted the NAO report, launching her 'action plan' for tackling violence on February 18. The plan, which will be overseen by a 'ministerial action group', has 51 measures.
These include ensuring that local agencies work together to identify individuals who risk becoming either perpetrators or victims of serious violence.
Other headline measures include issuing police with 100 portable knife detection arches and increasing 'the presumption to prosecute' people found in possession of knives.
Smith also announced a £1m campaign with voluntary group Be Safe to discourage young people from carrying knives and more than £20m over the next three years to support multi-agency interventions and information sharing by the police, local councils, voluntary groups and health workers.
'We are determined not to let violent offenders get away with wrecking lives, by stopping them committing crimes in the first place,' Smith said.
By 2011, the government would have reduced serious violent crime, including gun and gang-related violence, knife crime, sexual and domestic violence, she pledged.
But shadow home secretary David Davis described the plan as 'too little, coming far too late' and accused Smith of 'belatedly papering over the cracks of an enormous problem of the government's own making'.
He added: 'The government has utterly failed to take the kind of decisive – and sustained – action needed to clamp down on knife crime.'
PFfeb2008
