Introducing the Young Adult Safety series

Here I introduce three key areas we’ll be exploring in this series: serious violence reduction orders, joint enterprise prosecutions and offensive weapons homicide reviews. As well as some of the excellent of collaborators we are delighted to be working with.

One of our first areas we are focusing on is serious violence reduction orders (SVROs).

What are SVROs?

SVROs are a new and highly controversial civil order, introduced in last year’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and the Courts Act.

A SVRO can be issued by courts to anyone aged over 18 years old who has been convicted in a knife or weapons related offence, or convicted of an offence where a knife or weapon was present.

The order enables the police to stop and search those subject to a SVRO at any time, in any public place, without the need for any evidence based reason (or ‘reasonable grounds’).

Those subject to an order must inform the police where they live. An order can last anywhere between six months to two years in length.

If breached, for example, if someone subject to an order fails to inform the police of their home address within the required period, or is found to be carrying a weapon, the consequences include imprisonment for up to two years.  

Tackling violence?

SVROs join a lengthy list of civil orders which aim to deter certain behaviours (in this case weapons carrying) through restriction. Gang injunctions and knife crime prevention orders are other notable examples.

For their advocates, SVROs are an important ‘tool in the box’ to deter "those people who repeatedly carry weapons", and prevent serious violence.

For their detractors, these orders are a convenient way for the government to cynically tick off its 2019 manifesto pledge to introduce legislation on knife crime. At best, it is a performative distraction from both the genuine investment and broad base strategy required to address serious violence. At worse, SVROs seed draconian, harmful practices, operate with few legal safeguards, and serve to further criminalise.

One thing both advocates and detractors can agree on, is that the orders are likely to disproportionately target Black men. The Home Office's own impact assessment said so. 

Timely assessment

SVROs are currently being piloted prior to a decision about their national roll out. In the coming period, we’ll be working with StopWatch to offer a timely assessment of SVROs, including scrutinising unfolding developments since their implementation, and how this can inform future advocacy ahead of the orders proposed national roll out.

Joint Enterprise prosecutions

Joint enterprise is our second area of focus.

Popular with prosecutors as a means of securing convictions for whole groups of people, the majority of them young adults, this flexible set of common law practices and doctrines has been used in ways many rightly consider to be unjust.

Building on our work to date, Nisha Waller will be unpacking current joint enterprise prosecution practices affecting young adults, and assessing concrete proposals for change in group prosecution. We’ll be working with campaigns groups including JENGbA, to inform and strengthen advocacy to address injustices.

Offensive Weapon Homicide Reviews

Later in the Young Adult Safety project we are planning to look at Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews. This pilot initiative introduces, for the first time, an obligation on local authorities to review the deaths of those killed in homicides in a public place. Eighteen to twenty five year olds are the explicit focus of the pilot. The reviews offer the promise of genuine learning, and the risk of further stereotyping and wrong-headed conclusions and policies.

Future updates on our site will be delving deeper into these subjects in the coming months. Do get in touch if you’re interested in a specific aspect of this work or keeping in touch with the project.

The Young Adult Safety project is funded by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, at the Barrow Cadbury Trust.