Violence reduction and prevention

Today, I would like to tell you more about the work of my Office’s Violence Reduction and Prevention team, and how this is helping to give young people in Dorset a voice in how we deal with serious violence in this county. Firstly, it is important to say that dealing with violent crime is a priority for Dorset Police, and for my Office. Priority three of my Police and Crime Plan focuses solely on Fighting Violent Crime and High harm, with strong commitments around violence reduction as well as related issues including addiction and substance misuse.

Alongside robust enforcement from Dorset Police and support for initiatives from the Force as well as projects in the community, I also work alongside key authorities in the delivery of the Serious Violence Duty (SVD), to ensure partners are delivering on all the requirements, alongside scrutinising spend and interventions. The SVD ensures councils and local services including Dorset Police work together to share information and target interventions to prevent and reduce serious violence. The positive impact of the initiatives funded through the SVD have also resulted in the full allocation being offered for the next year - good news for everyone in Dorset.

Moving onto my Violence Reduction and Prevention (VRP) team. This team was established to assess what is needed to respond to serious violence locally, and to identify the gaps in provision, while creating a strategy to drive forward our approach to reducing violence in Dorset. Since I came to Office in 2021, I have been lobbying government for a Violence Reduction Unit for Dorset. I must make clear that Dorset is a safe place – one of the safest in the country – and I want a VRU to ensure our county stays safe. Dorset is one of the five forces with the lowest number of knife crime offences in the country, and recent data shows violence against the person offences have fallen by more than four per cent – outperforming the national average. But I know the public remain rightly concerned about violence and knife crime in particular, and while young people choose to carry knives, there is still work to do - work which a VRU would tackle robustly and effectively.

While I continue to lobby and campaign for funding to bring a VRU to Dorset, my VRP team are laying the groundwork and ensuring everything possible is being done within our current capabilities. They are focused on tackling the drivers for serious violence – vulnerability and drugs. There are a number of ways this is being done. Firstly, by commissioning services which are shown to reduce serious violence by reducing vulnerability. In the next few weeks, I will be making an announcement about one of these exciting projects recently launched in Dorset.

When it comes to the second of these drivers – illegal drugs – this team also oversee the activity of the Dorset and BCP Combatting Drugs Partnership. This organisation, of which I am the Senior Responsible Officer, ensures enforcement action to disrupt the drugs market, works to improve access to treatment and recovery services, and co-ordinates education and awareness raising to prevent young people and adults engaging in substance abuse. As key drivers of violence, it is imperative illegal drugs and harmful substances, and vulnerability issues are tackled if we are to get to the root of the problem and intervene to ensure these offences continue to fall.

Alongside commissioning vital services and tackling the issues behind violence, the team use data and research to understand what is needed locally, so our support goes towards evidence-based interventions which will alleviate the issues in Dorset. One of the main concerns when it comes to violence, is around the prevalence in young people and the VRP team are actively engaging with young people in order to help shape our strategies to reduce serious violence and I will be detailing this further in an update next week. Through all of this, we work alongside our partners to ensure everything we are doing supports a collective response to be as effective as possible. Violent crime and knife crime cannot be solved through policing alone – the root grows across many different sectors, and it is only by working in partnership with organisations and the community will we reduce violent crime and ensure our county is a safe place to live, work and visit for everyone.

David Sidwick

Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner