knife crime

Our Director, Richard Garside, was quoted in The Times (paywall) on Justice Secretary David Gauke's recently announced prison reform plans. 

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 Guardian, Richard drew light on the geographical clustering of knife violence in an article by Jamie Grierson. Richard said:

The Centre's director, Richard Garside, commented on knife crime trends and measures to tackle violence in yesterday's Guardian. 

Richard said it was inaccurate to describe the spate of knife crime as a national emergency, adding: 

It’s a very small number of the general population that’s either being victimised by this or in fear of their lives. It’s why these incidents seem quite shocking and why the policy world seems to fail to address it in a systematic level because for the vast majority of people, this doesn’t affect them

Our research on stop and search has been cited in a parliamentary debate on serious violence as to the limited effectiveness of stop and search on crime reduction. 

Susan McVie, Ellie Bates and Rebecca Pillinger recently published their research findings on violence reduction in Glasgow and London on the LSE blog. 

The findings support our own research, presented in Young people, violence and knives, a briefing we published in November examining knife violence trends and reduction efforts in Glasgow. 

Attempts to punish and prosecute our way out of knife violence are doomed to failure, according to a new report from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. The report – Young people, violence and knives – finds that police-led interventions and tougher sentencing have, at best, been ineffective and at worst, been counterproductive.