The Public Health Approach to Violence Reduction

Stories, Movements, and Hope
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-19-894546-8
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm

Reihe: Clarendon Studies in Criminology

In recent years, the UK has seen the emergence of a new approach to violence reduction—the public health approach. This method prioritises early intervention and holistic support to prevent violence upstream. This movement, based in part on a perceived success story in Scotland, has led to the founding of more than twenty Violence Reduction Units in England and Wales, and more than £200m of funding to support evidence-based interventions.

This book is based on a four-year, multi-method study of the public health approach to violence reduction in Scotland and England. Drawing on 190 interviews with leading professionals working in violence reduction, The Public Health Approach to Violence Reduction provides an empirical case study of the effects of the public health approach to violence reduction in the UK. It traces the evolution of the approach through different scales of policymaking and scrutinises the claims of its potential, using the Scottish model as a case study. The volume makes the case that the public health approach to violence reduction is not a single entity but an assorted set of principles, practices, and discourses that alter as they enter different contexts.

Informed by insights from the young people directly affected, The Public Health Approach to Violence Reduction aims to anchor policy in everyday life, thereby creating a roadmap for future policy that is deeply rooted in community experience.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fraser, Alistair

Billingham, Luke

Gillon, Fern

Irwin-Rogers, Keir

McVie, Susan

Newburn, Tim

Über Autor(innen)

Alistair Fraser is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Glasgow. His work focuses on issues of youth violence and urban change in a global and comparative context. He has carried out funded research on these subjects for the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the Research Grants Council (Hong Kong), the British Academy, and the Scottish Government. He is the author of Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (OUP, 2015) and Gangs & Crime: Critical Alternatives (Sage, 2017), and is a former BBC 'New Generation Thinker.'

Luke Billingham is a youth worker and academic who has been involved in violence prevention practice and research since 2014, when he started a youth project in his home community of Hackney, East London. He co-authored the cross-party parliamentary Youth Violence Commission final report in 2020, and the monograph Against Youth Violence in 2022. Beyond his work on violence, Luke has published in peer-reviewed academic journals on critical citizenship education, youth wellbeing, youth leisure spaces, and the history of informal football.

Fern Gillon is a Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde. Her work utilises co-production and creative methods to explore children and young people's experiences of crime and justice. She has carried out research and evaluations funded by the Scottish Government, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Leverhulme Trust and has been published in peer review journals including Theoretical Criminology, British Educational Research Journal and The International Journal of Children's Rights.

Keir Irwin-Rogers is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Open University and has worked in the area of violence prevention since 2017 when he was invited to be lead criminologist on the cross-party Youth Violence Commission. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Critical Criminology, Law & Contemporary Problems, and the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. He has also provided evidence to numerous Parliamentary committees and inquiries, including the Science and Technology Committee and Youth Select Committee.

Susan McVie is a Professor of Quantitative Criminology at the University of Edinburgh. She co-directs the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime and the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research. Her areas of research include crime patterns and trends, youth gangs and knife crime, and violence and vulnerability. She is an advisor to governments in Scotland, the UK, and a range of international countries on policy issues relating to crime, justice and policing.

Tim Newburn is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the London School of Economics, a previous President of the British Society of Criminology, and an Official Historian of Criminal Justice. He was elected to the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2005 and is the author of over 40 books on policing and criminal justice.