News

This week in media appearances

Friday, 8 March 2019

It's been a busy week for our Director, Richard Garside, who has given his comments on a range of criminal justice issues. 

In Tuesday's GuardianRichard drew light on the geographical clustering of knife violence in an article by Jamie GriersonRichard said:

It tends to come in little bursts. Retaliation is a factor with turf wars going on. These short bursts are a feature of knife violence. It’s a social contagion. There’s a stabbing and there’s a retaliation and then a retaliation to that. It’s quite unpredictable, but it’s not entirely random, because we’re talking about specific groups of people in certain areas.

The New York Times published a piece on the similar theme of knife violence in the UK but highlighted serious violence within the context of austerity and reduced funding for interventionist services. Whilst there are many calls currently for more police and enforcement to deal with violence, there are also growing calls for public health responses. However, according to Richard, despite the public health response gaining currency, we still face a lack of funding for this. Read the full article here

For more research on knife violence, go to our publications and comments sections.

Wired featured an article on Why it's so hard to blame a rise in UK knife crime on police cuts in which Richard commented on the evidence of correlation between crime and police numbers, in particular Metropolitan Police Chief Cressida Dick's assertion of the link between the two, saying:

There's no data that can conclusively backup her claim, but there’s no data that can conclusively back up the contrary claim that there is a relationship

Richard offered his insight for an Economist aricle on Britain's first prison transgender wing inside HMP Downview women's prison, emphasising that the issue is a clash of rights.