Stop-and-search and knife crime

Sir, – To a veteran researcher during two “knife-crime epidemics” in Britain over the past 20 years, your article “Government to legislate for ‘stop and search’ knife-crime powers” (News, February 19th) felt worryingly familiar. There are lessons from recent history in Britain that might guide the Irish response to this problem.

The police-led responses to spikes in youth violence, particularly knife-involved murders, were dominated by large increases in stop and search. These policies did significant damage to police-community relations and intelligence networks and was found to have no effect on violence. Perhaps most damaging was that it reinforced the belief that violence prevention is solely the responsibility of policing, when the evidence clearly indicates that the origins of a person’s violence are in their early life experience and environment, years before they carry a knife.

Echoing the successes of Scotland a decade before, the response to the second “epidemic” since 2019 has sought to share responsibility for “knife crime” among all branches of government, especially education, social care and health, coordinating this activity though “Violence Reduction Units”. This appears to be reaping benefits in terms of reduced number of admissions to hospital for violence and the lowest murder rate in years.

The lessons from Scotland, England and Wales are that while police need to be able to stop and search a person they are confident is a threat to the public, basing a violence prevention policy on more police power can be profoundly counter-productive. Violence prevention requires a long-term, whole system strategy of which policing is just one part: tread carefully and share the load. – Yours, etc,