St Helens Council to work on pan-Merseyside strategy on tackling knife crime

Supt Louise Harrison, lead strategic officer on knife crime for Merseyside Police, told the People’s Board that local authorities are ‘working in silos’ and said a joined-up approach was needed.

The area commander for St Helens said it has been agreed by Police and Crime Commissioner Jane Kennedy and other strategic partners to create a pan-Merseyside joint strategy to tackle knife crime.

This will see Merseyside Police and St Helens, Sefton, Knowsley and Wirral councils carry out individual pieces of work that will contribute to the overall strategy.

St Helens Council has been tasked with creating a jointly-agreed response on knife crime, which is made up of a number of elements, including a joint communications plan.

“It’s a non-police strategy, a partnership strategy,” Supt Harrison said.

“What it says is that collectively we should develop methods of collecting and analysing meaningful information between partner agencies to ensure we reduce knife-related incidents across the whole of Merseyside.”

In addition, all partners will meet six times a year.

“There are a number of key outcomes that if we collectively try to achieve those we are confident we can have a real impact on knife crime,” Supt Harrison added.

She admitted that, collectively, the police and its partners do not currently understand the root causes of knife crime

“There is a number of reasons why,” she said. “We don’t record knife crime.

“We record bladed articles so that can be anything from a compass to a milk bottle.

“So, they’re all jumbled in with our crime stats.

“Knife crime also includes domestic violence and incidents within the home.

“As the knife crime lead what I really want to do is try and tease out what the problem is because I don’t think we can’t put an appropriate response to it until we really understand what the issues are and have a significant, problem profile.”

Supt Harrison said knife crime is often portrayed as a youth issue by the national press, but said local data suggest this is not the case.

She said data for Merseyside suggest that knife crime offenders are predominantly males between the ages of 17 to 25.

“Our demographic in terms of knife crime is slightly different compared to some of the other areas in cities that we’re seeing,” Supt Harrison said.

“But nevertheless, we need to focus on every aspect, from playground up to our prisons really."

Supt Harrison said the data suggests knife crimes in Merseyside tend to occur in open spaces such as parks.

She told the People’s Board that the police and its partners need to be ‘smart’ about understanding the data and must collate relevant information.

Supt Harrison said: “There’s lots of stats out there but what we really need to do is tease out the very specific problems and have, and particularly here for us in St Helens, and work on those as a collective.”