Reducing the Risk of Violent Crime

Book excerpt: This is the 45th report from the Committee of Public Accounts (HCP 546, session 2007-08). It follows an NAO report on the same topic published as HCP 241, session 2007-08 (ISBN 9780102952964). In general, violent crime has fallen in recent years, but mores serious violent offences, such as homicide and wounding, have not fallen as swiftly. The number of recorded crimes involving a firearm doubled between 1998-99 and 2005-06, as did the number of 15-17 year olds convicted of carrying a knife in public. The Committee has set out a number of conclusions and recommendations, including: that only since 2007 has it been mandatory for the police to record the presence of a knife at the scene of a crime; that the majority of victims of violent crime treated in A & E units did not report their injuries to the police; that the Committee believes that the Home Office and the Department of Health should jointly establish a national system for the automatic sharing of depersonalised violent crime data between hospitals, police and the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships; that the Department has made little progress since 2005 in managing to distribute funding for tackling violent crime to the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships; that the Home Office has a limited understanding of the nature of gang membership and activity and how such activity has changed over time; that only one third of the Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships had developed written strategies to tackle violent crime and that they also lacked the analytical capacity needed to assess the data they collect on violent crime in their locality.