By Matt Jarram, Local Democracy Reporter
A councillor who has worked in the courts for the last 20 years said she was “shocked” by the number of people coming through the doors charged with knife crime offences.
Cllr Linda Woodings (Lab), representing the Basford ward at Nottingham City Council, raised her concerns at a Police and Crime Panel meeting at County Hall on Monday, March 28.
She wanted to know whether schemes designed to divert young people away from violent crime were working and being measured on their outcomes.
Police figures show violent knife crime offences have risen slightly across Nottinghamshire.
There were 720 reports in the 12 months to December 2020 compared to 745 in the 12 months to December 2021.
Police said this is largely attributable to the easing of Covid restrictions, the restart of the night-time economy and evidence of increases in gang tensions, which is being closely monitored.
Cllr Woodings told the panel: “I chaired the remand court for weekend arrests on Monday morning in Magistrates’ Court and I was shocked at the number of people coming through with possession of a bladed article.
“Some of them young and some of them with quite significant mental health issues as well.
“I appreciate that was just a snapshot of a day in court, but I have been on the bench for 20 years and I had not seen that prevalence of cases in such a short period of time.”
She asked what was being done to “persuade young people not to carry any bladed article or other weapon with them when they leave the home.”
She also asked the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), made up of key partners to tackle crime and prevent serious violence across the county how it intended to follow up the success of some of the programmes it is running.
As of February 2022, a total of 2,799 children and young people have been reached through both group and one-to-one interventions through the VRU.
Programmes include Divert Plus, a youth justice-led service in custody for children aged 10-17 years who will be provided with restorative justice and community-led mentoring, and U-turn for young people aged 16-25 years.
Natalie Baker Swift, head of the VRU, said in her report to the panel that the pandemic and its restrictions had “a big impact on social patterns of behaviour and violence”.
She told the panel: “We have seen up until October of last year a 21 per cent decrease of serious violence in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire compared to the three-year pandemic average so we are on a positive trajectory, not that we can be complacent.
“We know from the evidence that a lot of young people carry knives out of fear so if we can start to bring those numbers down, we can start to show a positive picture in Nottinghamshire, which we are starting to see, then that fear will decrease and deter young people from carrying a knife.”
