Our three-pronged approach to dealing with drug violence is succeeding in bringing harm down: working with the National Crime Agency to bust international drug gangs, using stop & search and local intelligence to take drugs and weapons off our streets, and through the Violence and Vulnerability Partnership protecting young and vulnerable people from gangs while we deal with the hardened criminals who prey on them. We take a public health approach to crime, focusing on keeping young people free from crime and early intervention to help steer them to a successful life course. The activity funded by the partnership works with people vulnerable to being groomed into gangs, County Lines and drug driven violence. The projects also target gang members and help them step away from a criminal lifestyle. I support the use of Serious Violence Reduction Orders and the implementation of Homicide Reviews for death by offensive weapon. The introduction of Rapid Homicide Reviews in Essex has led to a significant improvement in how Essex Police prevent murder.
Hospital knife-wound admissions are down 25% since 2018, and drug-crime related knife homicide is down 70%. In 2023 Essex Police rolled up 453 Organised Crime Groups, up from 99 in 2019. But we can and must do a lot more. The evidence is that the programme we started in 2018 will take ten years to really make a difference, and change our society. We must see it through. At the same time, we can tighten our laws and toughen enforcement. I am pleased that our lobbying together with Anna Firth MP and her colleagues has had machetes banned. And Essex Police was the first force in the country to successfully prosecute under the new legislation against dealing in nitrous oxide. We must find ways of dealing with new threats, such as the one presented by powerful and deadly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. In the meantime, the Firebreaks courses delivered by Essex County Fire & Rescue Service will continue to keep young people out of harm, and we must develop our youth interventions further.
