Saving Lives. Reducing Harm. Protecting the public.

An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11

This document is designed to guide local practitioners in their strategic planning and delivery of the Home Office's priorities with respect to serious violence over the next three years. It takes stock of the current situation and what we has been achieved to date, and sets out the vision: to save lives, reduce harm and protect the public. It outlines how our understanding of what works can be applied in each local area, and how Government will support the front line in doing this.

Title: Saving Lives. Reducing Harm. Protecting the public.
Author: Home Office
Number of pages: 68
Date published: February 2008
Availability: Download full report PDF 1Mb

The Government’s Public Service Agreements (PSAs) for 2008-11 include commitments to prioritise action to tackle the most serious violent and sexual offences. Serious violence covers a wide range of offences, including homicide and serious wounding, offences involving weapons, domestic violence, hate crime and serious sexual offences including rape. These crimes are extremely rare: together they account for only about 1% of all crime. Yet when they do occur they cause signiicant harm, both to individual victims and their families in terms of physical injury and psychological trauma, and to society more widely in terms of fear.

The prioritisation of serious violence in the new PSAs is key to achieving our vision: to save lives, reduce harm and protect the public. This in turn is part of a wider response to crime and the harms caused by crime and re-offending, as set out in Cutting Crime: A New Partnership 2008-11 and the forthcoming Strategic Plan for Reducing Re-Offending 2008-11. Alongside this the Criminal Justice Strategic Plan 2008-11: Working Together to Cut Crime and Deliver Justice places an emphasis on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Criminal Justice System in bringing offences, and particularly serious offences, to justice, as well as enhancing support for victims in the Criminal Justice System.

This Plan sets out a range of actions we will be driving forward to reduce priority crime types, including gun and gang-related crime; knife crime; and sexual and domestic violence. It explores good practice we have developed in these areas, and sets out how we can build upon this in moving forward. It guides frontline practitioners as to how they can deliver the new PSA targets, with a focus on two main cross-cutting themes:

Ensuring that agencies are able to work together to manage known violent offenders, as well as those who are most at risk of involvement in serious violence either as perpetrators or victims, in order to prevent violence from occurring in the irst place or escalating in seriousness.
Providing care and support for victims of serious violence, in order to reduce the impact of and the harm caused by these offences, to reduce future risk and vulnerability, and to work with them to secure convictions.

We will support our delivery partners to fulfill their role in achieving our over-arching vision, and will work with them to ensure that progress is sustained. The Home Secretary will draw together Cabinet Members from across the government into a new Ministerial Action Group to oversee delivery of our priorities, supported by officials, senior police officers and others. Helping people to feel safe in their homes and local communities is a key element of the new Home Office Strategy. However, just as partnership working among many different statutory and non-statutory organisations is vital to tackling violence at a local level, the Government’s response cannot be the responsibility of the Home Office alone. That is why this Action Plan is cross-governmental in scope. It has also been developed with the close involvement of the police and other delivery partners, who will work closely with us in implementing it. The table opposite summarises our key objectives in achieving our vision over the next three years, and the action we propose to take in order to deliver these.

Key Objective	Action
To reduce gun crime and gang-related violence.	We will work with the police to develop state-of-the-art imaging technology to provide information and intelligence on firearms used in crime. We will introduce new controls on deactivated firearms In those communities affected by gang-related violence, we will continue to work with the police and other delivery partners to: identify key gang members enhance the use of covert surveillance implement targeted, multi-agency crackdowns We will ensure that, in particular with respect to gang violence, witnesses are given the best possible protection from the earliest stage of the criminal justice process. This will include strengthening special measures such as live links. We will implement the learning from the Tackling Gangs Action Programme, which has operated since September 2007 in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester.
To crack down on knife crime, in particular involving young people.	Working with the voluntary organisation Be Safe, we will over 5 years educate 1.1 million young people about the dangers of carrying weapons. We will improve the detection and deterrence of knife crime through the immediate provision of an additional 100 portable knife arches and 400 search ‘wands’ to the police and others. We will work with the police and Crown Prosecution Service to create a national framework for the use of warnings, cautions and charges for those caught in possession of knives, and increase the presumption to prosecute for this very serious crime. We will work with the Youth Justice Board to ensure that young people convicted of knife-related offences receive focused interventions to change their behaviour and reduce re-offending.
To drive forward work on sexual violence, with a particular focus on improving the investigation and prosecution of rape and protecting children from sex offenders.	We will continue to improve the investigation and prosecution of serious sexual offences, and we will robustly manage local performance through a cross-CJS Rape Performance Group. We will more than double the number of Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) to cover every part of the country, to ensure that victims of sexual assault have access to immediate care and support following an attack, and that where appropriate the police can gather valuable forensic evidence in order to help secure convictions. We will work with the internet industry to ensure that the online protection of children from sex offenders is as robust as possible. We will continue to implement the recommendations of the 2007 Review of the Protection of Children from Sex Offenders , including allowing for disclosure of child sex offenders’ convictions to certain members of the public where it is necessary for the interests of child protection.
To roll out the good practice we have developed in tackling domestic violence.	We will double the number of Specialist Domestic Violence Courts to ensure that sensitive domestic violence related cases can be heard in a safe and protected court environment. We will roll out Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs) nationally in order to reduce repeat victimisation among victims of domestic violence.
To reduce street prostitution, human trafficking and all forms of sexual exploitation.	We will implement the Government’s co-ordinated Prostitution Strategy , and the UK Action Plan on Combatting Human Traficking . We will conduct a review of what more can be done to tackle the demand for prostitution, and subject to Parliamentary approval we will reform the law on street offences to support routes out of prostitution and exploitation.
To ensure that local agencies work together to identify those individuals in their communities who are involved or at risk of involvement in serious violence, either as perpetrators or victims, and are in a position to respond appropriately and robustly to prevent offending and re-offending.	We will ensure that local agencies work together and share information about known and at-risk offenders and victims. This will include a particular focus on information sharing between health services and the police. We will strengthen arrangements for managing proactively those individuals who are identified as being at risk of committing serious violence. We will expand the MARAC model to reduce repeat victimisation among all vulnerable victims of violence. Subject to Parliamentary approval, we will introduce Violent Offender Orders to provide an effective additional tool to protect the public from the risk of serious harm caused by dangerous people after the end of their sentence.
To ensure that victims of violence have access to better care and support.	We will ensure that suitable support services are available to victims of violence, and will rebalance the Criminal Justice System in favour of victims. We will support all partnerships to offer independent advisory services to victims of sexual and domestic violence and, where appropriate, other forms of violence where victims are particularly vulnerable. We will implement the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings to ensure minimum standards and rights for all identified victims of human trafficking. We will support local partnerships to expand the Specialist Court model beyond domestic violence, to cover other forms of violence where victims are particularly vulnerable.

Alongside these priority actions we will ensure that we are in a position to respond to new challenges in violence as they arise, including working with relevant industries to tackle the issue of offensive content on the internet and the representation of violence in video games, films and other media. We will continue to review the way in which changing demographics in local communities can affect the nature of the challenge with respect to violence; honour-based violence is an issue that is increasing in importance, and we will develop a national Action Plan for tackling this.

On many issues we look to communities to take the lead in addressing local concerns. With respect to serious violence we believe that, while communities will have an important role to play in this area, the suffering and fear caused and the nature of the challenge faced in reducing these very serious offences requires a particularly strong response from the Government. That is why we are determined to act decisively and robustly in taking forward a range of activity at national level, and why we will work closely with frontline practitioners to ensure serious violence is tackled as effectively as possible everywhere.

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Last update: Monday, May 19, 2008

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