News and opinion

Listen to young people affected by knife crime on early intervention, safe spaces, and trusted adults. How their priorities are now government policy.

What do you picture when you hear the word ‘extremism’? Clear ideologies, organised groups, anti-democratic chants? Perhaps it’s something similar to the upsetting sight I witnessed in Hyde Park recently: Nazi swastikas, and the words ‘Britishness is Whiteness’, proudly displayed on protest placards.  Long-standing forms of extremism clearly persist and must remain a central focus of national security. But a report by the Home Affairs Committee, published last month, paints a more varied picture. It…

As a young person in 2026, I think awareness alone is no longer enough. This Mental Health Awareness Week we need action.

Guest Authors: Ali Fraser and Luke Billingham The Home Office have recently published a new strategy designed to ‘halve knife crime’ over a ten year period. But what does it actually take to achieve this? In this blog we reflect on a four year study on the public health approach to violence reduction, asking what…

Focused deterrence programmes sit at the sharp edge of violence prevention, combining enforcement and support in ways that can either reduce harm or reinforce existing inequalities. Building on the Race Equity Implementation Guidance for Focused Deterrence, this blog shares delivery-level learning from the Nottingham-based Another Way programme about where race equity shows up in practice, and learning for future delivery.  This work was informed by Laurelle Brown Training and Consultancy’s…

In 2024, the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) and the Centre for Justice Innovation (CJI) embarked on a partnership together with one shared aim: to help policing and youth justice services deliver diversion effectively for children.  Eighteen months on, the partnership has supported practitioners across the country to translate evidence into practice – helping youth justice services implement diversion approaches that prevent young people from becoming…

When a programme combines enforcement and support to prevent violence, the question of racial equity isn’t optional; it is fundamental. Since 2023, I been working as a Race Equity Consultant across the Focused Deterrence (FD) programme in Leicester, Coventry and Wolverhampton (CIRV), and Nottingham, and providing light-touch support to Greater Manchester, where the team had their own core race equity consultants. Over this period, we have achieved progress,…

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a public health and human rights crisis, and it is now a national priority.  The Home Office’s new strategy places much greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention to address the root causes of abuse. This includes significant investment in identifying which approaches are most effective in changing harmful behaviours and misogynistic attitudes in young…