BREAKING THE
PATHWAY TO VIOLENCE
Dr. Keri Nixon & DCI Brian Roberts
BACKGROUND
Home Office Reducing Violent Crime
Murder of Rhys Jones
Gun Crime
Knife crime
Violent Offender Management Unit (VOMU)
 Referral criteria: Violent index offence (s20 and above, affray,
robbery) or
• 3 or more previous convictions of violence or
• Known member of a gang and/or associates with known
organised criminals or
• Known to carry/use firearms and/or knives
 Work with VOMU as a condition of their order
RESEARCH AIM
• To understand the pathways to violence amongst
serious violent offenders and OCG groups in order to
intervene to break these pathways.
• To investigate whether the characteristics of violent
offenders reflect 3 distinct background themes (based
on previous research)
• To determine if violent offenders can be assigned
predominantly to a background theme
• To examine the relationship between weapon use and
background characteristics of violent offenders
LITERATURE
Complete literature review conducted on violent offenders,
risk factors and models of offending behaviour
Research on youths who sexually abuse: Abuse,
Delinquency, Impairment
Risk factors identified: Historical, Clinical, Contextual
DATA
105 offenders – gun crime nominals (40), random
sample of MAPPA and YOS violent offenders
From the 10 SOC headings mainly engaged in – drug
activity, organised acquisitive crime, sexual offences,
specialist money laundering, violent criminal activity
Form part of the North West OCG picture
Data gathered from offenders’ case files, police
systems, YOS files, probation files, interviews with
police officers, case managers and from data
gathered through interviews with offenders
DESCRIPTIVE RESULTS
• Mean age: 26.8
• 103 – male
• 93% of the sample White British
3% - Black Caribbean
2% - Other
1% - Black African
1% - White/Black Caribbean
ANALYSIS
• SSA – Smallest Space Analysis (MDS)
• Based on the assumption that any underlying structure will be
most readily appreciated by examining the relationship every
variable has with every other variable (Canter, 1995)
• Calculates correlation between every variable
• Jaccards co-efficient used as this measure of association
does not take account of joint non-occurrences
• SSA non-metric therefore correlates are rank ordered to
enable SSA to represent the characteristics in the smallest
possible dimensionality.
• Underlying structure of background characteristics examined
allowing any themes to be identified.
• Higher the correlation between 2 variables the closer they are
on the plot (Guttman, 1968)
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WEAPON USE
AND BACKGROUND THEME
• Although all these offenders are deemed to be high risk
serious violent offenders, some are at a higher risk, we would
argue, of endangering lives due to their willingness to use
either a knife and/or a firearm.
• Tested using Mann Whitney U
• Offenders who used/carried a knife were found to have
significantly higher number of Vulnerable (U=1299.5, N1=44,
N2=60, p=.013) and Antisocial characteristics (U=957.5, N1=45,
N2=60, p=.016) than offenders who did not use/carry a knife.
• Offenders who used/carried a firearm were found to have
significantly higher number of Antisocial variables (U=366,
N1=35, N2=70, p<.001) than offenders who did not use/carry a
firearm.
DISTRIBUTION OF GUN CRIME
NOMINALS ACROSS THEMES
CLASSIFICATION OF OFFENDERS
•
•
•
•
•
67.6% dominant theme *
41.9% anti-social
17% abuse
10% vulnerable
18% hybrid (17% anti-social/abuse, 1% anti-social/vulnerable)
* Using established method to determine whether offenders could be
assigned to a dominant theme – To be assigned to a theme the %
occurrence of variables in that theme had to be greater than the sum of
the scores for the other themes. To be classified as a hybrid 2 themes had
very similar % occurrence of over 33%. If all regions were of similar %
occurrence they were unclassifiable (either very low or very high)
• 14% unclassifiable (7.6% low number of variables, 6.7% high
number in each theme)
DOMINANT THEME AND USE OF WEAPON
•
•
•
•
Due to the small frequency in some of the cells Chi squares failed to show significant findings for all
the analyses even using Fishers exact.
More data is required in order to test these results significantly.
Despite the low cell frequencies Abuse offenders were found to be significantly less likely to use
knives or firearms than the Vulnerable (Х²=6.45, df=1, p=.011), Abuse-Anti social (Х²=4.86, df=1,
p=.028) and Antisocial (Х²=4.7, df=1, p=.03) offenders.
Abuse offenders were also found to be significantly less likely to use firearms than the Abuse-Anti
social (Х²=6.44, df=1, p=.028), Antisocial (Х²=10.51, df=1, p=.001) and Unclassifiable High (two
tailed-Fishers exact p=.005) offenders.
LOW
ABUSE
VULNERABLE
ABUSE/ANTI-SOCIAL
ANTI-SOCIAL
HIGH
TOP 10 OFFENDERS
4 of VOMU offenders
5 sets of brothers
All known to Merseyside Police as prolific and
dangerous offenders
Influence of family and associates
RISK IDENTIFICATION
PRO-FORMA
Pro-forma designed based on analyses
Thus, aim NOT to determine risk but identify at risk of
what and what particular issues the offender has and
what interventions needed
Future – use with young people
The 2nd P – PREVENT (Pursue, Prevent, Protect, Prepare)
Early intervention