Home secretary Sajid Javid will call for a ‘public health’ approach to crime which will see violence treated as a contagious disease, according to reports.
Mr Javid is set to make the announcement at the Conservative party conference where he will give police officers, teachers, social workers and council officials a new legal duty to take a ‘public health’ approach ahead when dealing with gang violence.
The plan comes amid a surge in stabbings and shootings plaguing England and Wales, it is claimed.
Mr Javid is set to make the announcement at the Conservative party conference where he will give police officers, teachers, social workers and council officials a new legal duty to take a ‘public health’ approach to violent crime
The Conservative MP for Bromsgrove is to establish a £200 million youth endowment fund and encourage public service officials to identify young people in danger of becoming involved in violent crime, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Taking a ‘public health approach’ to violence, pioneered in Chicago in the US in 2000, has been successfully used in Scotland for more than a decade.
The move involves identifying young people in danger of becoming involved in crime using ‘risk factors’ such as truancy, school exclusion and domestic violence.
School exclusions are a ‘highly significant’ factor in the rise of gang-related violence, according to a study seen by The Times ahead of its publication on Monday.
The report suggests that vulnerable children excluded and sent to pupil referral units are deliberately targeted by drugs gangs.
The number of school exclusions has increased since 2014, with some 7,720 exclusions in the academic year ending in 2017 – up from 6,685 the previous year, according to Department of Education statistics.
The Conservative MP for Bromsgrove is to establish a £200 million youth endowment fund and encourage public service officials to identify young people in danger of becoming involved in violent crime, the Daily Telegraph reports
A rise in violent crime in England and Wales has coincided with a record low number of police officers.
The announcement of £200m in new funding, to be spread over ten years, comes just months after Amber Rudd launched a two-year £40m Serious Violence Strategy, including an £11m ‘Early Intervention Youth Fund’.
There have been more than 100 murders in the capital so far this year, with a third of the victims aged between 16 and 24.
This month London mayor Sadiq Khan announced the establishment of a Violence Reduction Unit in the capital, based on the successful Glasgow programme.