Serious Violence
Serious violence has a devastating impact on the lives of victims, families and communities.
The Serious Violent Crime Duty aims to ensure that agencies across England and Wales work together to prevent and reduce serious violence in their local area.
Under this Duty, we are required to identify the types of serious violence that occurs in the BCP area, the causes of that violence, and the groups of people most affected or at risk. This was achieved with our Serious Violence Needs Assessment.
We have identified four priority crime types from our Needs Assessment, these are:
- Sexual Assaults and Rape
- Violence Against the Person – Knife Related Offences
- Robbery
- Domestic Abuse
We are also required under the Duty to prepare, implement, and regularly review a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence in the area. Our Serious Violent Crime Strategy outlines our partnership work to reduce serious violent crime and protect vulnerable people.
Every year, we conduct a strategic assessment of local crime and disorder, considering local volumes and trends, emerging issues of national concern, and the priorities of key partners, including the Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner.
Our strategic approach to addressing serious crime within BCP is:
- Focus on a defined population – Those that the evidence shows being most at risk of being a victim and or a perpetrator. These risks could be where victims or offenders live, common experiences, a health condition, lifestyle or demographic characteristics, such as age.
- With and for communities - Focus on improving outcomes for communities by listening to them, involving them in helping to shape and co-design the solutions using lived experience and trauma informed approaches and empowering communities who want to do more for themselves, to do so.
- Not constrained by organisational or professional boundaries – Our communities can’t be neatly categorised into one label, people are complex and will cover a range of different characteristics, such as ethnicity, geography and common interests. Working in partnerships with communities and community and voluntary sector organisations means that we can look across the system for solutions and not be too constrained to one way of working.
- Focus on generating long-term as well as short-term solutions - Acting on the root causes and determinants of serious violence as well as addressing the immediate impact of the problem.
- Whole-systems approach to tackling serious violence across BCP- adopting a multi-agency approach across organisational boundaries to enable us to pool resources, avoid duplication and create better outcomes. This will need the support of all relevant partner organisations to work together.
- Use data and intelligence to identify any communities disproportionately affected – identifying risk factors within the evidence and engaging with communities to understand their lived experience and what would work best for them.
- Interventions based on evidence of what works to tackle the tackle the problem – using best practice and evidenced success to ensure the best outcomes for communities.
- Diversity and equalities- recognising that equality, diversity and human rights are central to developing effective interventions across the system.