Speaker A
Scottish city Glasgow once held a grim title: "the murder capital of Europe." But levels of violence in the city have fallen by 60% in just over a decade, all thanks to a radical approach: treating violence as a disease.
Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit treats violence as a disease, cutting crime by nearly half with a public health approach.
Key Takeaways
- Treating violence as a public health issue can significantly reduce crime rates.
- Community-based interventions and support for at-risk individuals are crucial.
- Policy changes and stronger legal penalties complement prevention efforts.
- Violence reduction has broad social, health, and economic benefits.
- Scotland's model offers a replicable approach for other cities facing violence epidemics.
Summary
- Glasgow was once known as the 'murder capital of Europe' with extremely high violence rates.
- Between the 1980s and early 2000s, social issues like alcohol abuse and unemployment fueled crime.
- In 2005, Glasgow police created the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), treating violence as a preventable disease.
- The VRU's strategy was inspired by Gary Slutkin's work treating violence like an epidemic in Chicago.
- Key VRU methods include interrupting violence transmission, preventing at-risk individuals from violent behavior, and changing community attitudes.
- The VRU also lobbied for stronger penalties, tripling knife-carrying penalties in Scotland over ten years.
- By 2016, violent crime in Scotland dropped by 49%, with murders reduced by 47%.
- Emergency hospital admissions for assaults fell by 56% since 2007, easing healthcare burdens.
- Economic benefits include saving millions per homicide case, outweighing VRU operational costs.
- Other UK cities like London are adopting Scotland's model to combat rising knife crime.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Here's how Scotland is curing violent crime. Growing levels of alcohol abuse, unemployment, and inequality between the 1980s and early 2000s had contributed to a social crisis in Scotland.
Speaker A
By 2005, the crime rate had reached its highest levels in a decade, and the United Nations released a report which named Scotland as the most violent place in the developed world. But it was in Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, where the problem was most severe.
Speaker A
Nightly, I can anticipate around a dozen calls for gang fighting on the street or group disorder outside somebody's home.
Speaker A
This high concentration of gang violence had pushed Glasgow's murder rate almost three times higher than the rest of the country. But in 2005, in response to the growing crisis, Glasgow's regional police force set up the Violence Reduction Unit, or VRU.
Speaker A
It became the only police force in the world to take a public health approach to violence. That meant treating violence as a preventable disease rather than just as a criminal matter.
Speaker A
The VRU's new strategy was inspired by the work of Gary Slutkin, an American physician who'd spent a decade fighting cholera and AIDS epidemics across Africa during the '80s and '90s. When he came back to Chicago, Slutkin was confronted with another epidemic: gun violence.
Speaker A
I can get a gun anytime I want. After mapping crime data, he noticed that violence followed the same patterns as contagious diseases.
Speaker A
One act led directly to another, and these were often found clustered together. He also found that violence could be transmitted between people.
Speaker A
If a person was exposed to violence, it increased the likelihood that they would commit violence.
Speaker A
In 2000, Slutkin created a pilot project on the west side of Chicago which controlled outbreaks of violence in a similar way to health epidemics and focuses on three key areas.
Speaker A
First, to find the cause of an outbreak and interrupt its transmission to other people.
Speaker A
This work is carried out by violence interrupters, people with an established relationship with the community who can help identify symptoms and eliminate the root causes of violence.
Speaker A
Second is to identify people who might be at risk of developing violent behavior and try to prevent it from happening.
Speaker A
This is done by offering alternatives to gang membership through employment, housing, and health support.
Speaker A
Finally, an important step is to change attitudes towards violence, making communities understand that it's something preventable, not inevitable.
Speaker A
This approach has been adapted by the Violence Reduction Unit in Scotland. But as well as helping people break free from violence, the VRU has also advocated for stronger penalties for those who continue on a path of crime.
Speaker A
Through lobbying, the penalty for carrying a knife in Scotland has tripled in ten years.
Speaker A
By 2006, Scotland had extended the work of the VRU nationwide, and during the following decade, violent crime fell by 49 percent, including murders which were reduced by 47 percent.
Speaker A
These dramatic reductions have helped to ease the burden on the Scottish healthcare system, with hospital emergency assault admissions down by 56 percent since 2007.
Speaker A
And the benefits of a reduced crime rate are economic too. Each homicide case in the UK is estimated to cost the taxpayer 2.3 million dollars, which is more than the cost of running the VRU for an entire year.
Speaker A
While Scotland is aiming to achieve the lowest levels of crime in the world by 2025, at the other end of the country, London has seen a recent surge in knife crime.
Speaker A
In the year to May 2018, there were 97 fatal stabbings, and so the UK capital has announced it will be one of many cities around the world looking to follow Scotland's example in the hope of breaking the cycle of violence.
Topics:ScotlandGlasgowViolence Reduction Unitpublic health approachcrime reductionviolence as diseaseGary Slutkinknife crimegang violenceBloomberg Originals
