How A&E and custody navigators are helping to break the cycle of violence in South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire’s Violence Reduction Unit – one of 18 in the country – hopes to tackle violent crime at its root.
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The unit was one of 40 set up in 2019, with a £1.6m grant from the Home Office.

It is funded separately to the police and PCC. The Home Office allocated funding to 40 areas which had the highest levels of violent crime – measured by the number of recorded hospital admissions for injury with a sharp object.

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Graham Jones, head of the VRUGraham Jones, head of the VRU
Graham Jones, head of the VRU
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“South Yorkshire was one of the highest,” said Graham Jones, head of the unit. “That’s the kind of competition you don’t want to win.”

“Nonetheless, South Yorkshire was amongst the highest, with the other 18 parts at that time, with some obvious places like London and Birmingham, and, the big cities [like] Manchester tend to be, unsurprisingly, perhaps the focus of volume in that sense.”

The model is based on Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit, set up in 2005 after Glasgow became the murder capital of Europe.

It’s difficult to quantify what constitutes violent crime, but ONS statistics show that in the year to September 2021, 137,761 crimes excluding fraud were recorded in South Yorkshire.

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Of those, 50,233 were recorded as ‘violence against the person’, 13,235 were recorded as ‘violence with injury’, and 17 were homicides.

Mr Jones says the unit aims to tackle violence through a public health approach – stopping violence before it starts, and intervening when violent behaviour starts.

The unit works alongside all four councils – Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley, to provide an area profile, which can outline and tackle the issues each area is facing.

“We’re talking about long-term changes as the root base of what a violence reduction unit does,” added Mr Jones.

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“There is a lot of evidence, which suggests that there’s a link between violent crime and deprivation, educational failure, school exclusion, substance misuse, adverse childhood experiences … the kinds of things that would traumatise a child, and then that has, arguably a biological effect on brain development.”

To reach youngsters, the unit’s Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) programme visits schools to educate school teachers, staff and pupils on the bystander model.

The programme aims to educate people that they can do something to stop the situation and not be a bystander.

The unit aims to reach out to people involved with violence when they are at a crisis point, in the hopes of steering them away from crime.

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In order to do this, the unit has funded custody navigators and A&E support, to intervene at a point where those affected can be drawn away from violence.

The Plan B Custody Navigators are based in Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster, to listen to those detained in custody, and understand how they have become involved in criminality.

They provide help to steer them away from criminality and support them on a journey away from violent crime.

A&E navigators support those who have been hospitalised aft­er a violent or traumatic incident, in the hopes of steering them away from violent crime.

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They have been based at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital – which houses South Yorkshire’s major trauma centre – for the last 18 months.

“Patients with with violent injuries and serious violent injuries, whether they’re from Doncaster, Rotherham or Barnsley end up at Sheffield, ” added Mr Jones.

“There are certain crisis points in people’s lives where they’re more receptive to the possibility of change.

“At that moment, if you can get contact with them, it has a better chance of working.

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“They will offer contact and engage with that person in the hospital.

“And then if if the person is willing, they will follow up with them after the hospital and they will also refer them on because it’s in that sense it’s helping people get to the organisations that may be able to support them longer term.”

Mr Jones added that an initial evaluation by Sheffield Hallam University shows that the scheme is ‘promising’.

This kind of intervention can save money in the long run – a Home Office study in 2015 estimated that the cost of violence with injury crimes had reached £15.5bn.

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Forty-eight per cent of those who spend time in prison will go on to re-offend within a year, according to data from the Ministry of Justice.

By intervening early, and tackling the root causes of violent crimes, even a few success stories will be cost effective.