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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260626-how-scotland-changed-the-way-it-tackled-violence>
“It was no ordinary day in court. There was no jury, no witnesses or defendants
at Glasgow Sheriff Court on 24 October 2008. Instead, in front of the judge,
who was dressed in full regalia, were 85 rival gang members from the east end
of Glasgow, Scotland's biggest city.
For decades, the area had been plagued by territorial youth gangs, organised
crime and fights over drugs and weapons, with knife crime an almost daily
occurrence.
Despite their ongoing feuds, the assembled gang members fell silent as they
were addressed in turn by a range of speakers. A mother described seeing her
son's unrecognisable face after a gang-related machete attack at age 13. An
American basketball player recalled losing his brother to gun violence. Doctors
and surgeons described brutal lacerations and permanent disfigurements.
The message was clear: the violence has to stop.
"If I was the chief constable [of Strathclyde Police], I probably wouldn't have
let us do that," reflects Karyn McCluskey, co-founder and former director of
the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (SVRU), a specialist unit set up by the
police in 2005 and extended into a nationwide initiative the following year by
the Scottish government. The unit was behind the unusual spectacle of that day.
"He must have thought we were bonkers," she says. "That day, we had police
horses at the court, boats going up and down the [river] Clyde, because it was
a really risky thing to do. But there was a permissiveness around trying to do
something."
That something seemed to work. The gang members in attendance were given a
number to call afterwards for support if they wanted to end their involvement
in violence; after 10 similar sessions attended by 473 young people, almost 400
of them had called it.
The courtroom intervention was the first of what would be called Scotland's
"self-referral sessions", part of the country's efforts to curb record rates of
violence which plagued the nation, and particularly Glasgow.
Between 2003-2005, the city had the highest murder rate of any in Europe. The
United Nations declared Scotland the most violent country in the developed
world, with Scots almost three times as likely to be assaulted as Americans.
Newspapers were routinely filled with reports of gruesome murders and bloody
gang fights.
Over the following decade, the homicide rate would fall by 56% in Glasgow and
38% in Scotland more widely. Violent crime as a whole declined by almost a
third across the country between 2006 and 2015. Today the number of homicides
in Scotland is at its lowest level in over 20 years. Numbers of serious
assaults and attempted murders have undergone a similar decline.
While the statistics hide the individual stories of tragedy and horror of any
violent crime, it is still a remarkable turnaround.
Scotland now ranks somewhere in the middle of European countries for murders,
with lower levels per capita than the likes of Sweden, France or England and
Wales. How did a nation once beleaguered by knives, gangs and slayings make
such a decisive change?”
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
