Serious violence

Violence Reduction Partnership

Tackling the underlying causes of violence

The Violence Reduction Partnership, a Home Office funded multi agency partnership, is responsible for the strategic leadership and coordination of activity across the City and County to reduce and prevent serious violence using a public health approach.

The VRP team is a function of the Nottinghamshire Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (NOPCC).

The aim is to bring together specialists from health, police, local government, probation and community organisations to tackle violent crime and the underlying causes of violent crime.

The VRP takes a public health approach to reducing violent crime, focusing on what will make a difference to whole populations, communities and groups. In practice this means looking beyond the statistics about incidents of crime and its causes for research and evidence that explains why people behave in certain ways and what contributes to this behaviour.

Natalie Baker-Napier, head of the VRP, and Kerrie Henton, principal of Stone Soup Academy, which is one of the local organisations the VRP works with.

As the saying goes, ‘prevention is better than cure’, and the public heath approach means intervening through education and policy change before violence has chance to take hold, much in the same way as other population level health issues.

These interventions are aimed at building community resilience to violent crime and changing social norms, using the local intelligence to interrupt the transmission of violence by analysing where it may occur and intervening with those at higher risk.