Suchergebnisse

ObjectiveTo assess the feasibility of using linked education and offending data (from the National Pupil Database, Department for Education and the Police National Computer, Ministry of Justice) to identify matched control groups to evaluate violence prevention interventions.
ApproachWe simulated a plausible intervention (multi-systemic therapy aimed at high-risk young people living in high-risk areas) aimed at reducing the rate of serious violent offending between the ages of 15 and 18 years. We separately simulated an intervention in London and one outside London. We selected eligible individuals aged 14 years for inclusion in the intervention group, modelled the predictors of serious violent offending. then used two different matching algorithms – prognostic score matching and (coarsened) exact matching – to identify matched controls. We compared their effectiveness by measuring the observed rates of serious violence in the two groups.
ResultsThe dataset we used dataset included just under 1.5 million individuals born between 1st September 1995 and 31st August 1998 with complete data. Consistent with previous research, factors associated with the risk of serious violence included deprivation, geographical region, sex, ethnicity, attainment, school absence and exclusion, being in care of the local authority or classified as in need, as well as prior offending and some school-level factors. Exact matching or coarsened exact matching was more successful than prognostic score matching at selecting suitable control groups, both within and outside London. Within London, exact matching on sex, ethnicity and any offending before age 14 gave a suitable control group; outside London it was necessary to match on a few additional characteristics in order to obtain well-balanced groups.
ConclusionThe linked dataset can feasibly be used to generate suitable matched control groups to evaluate violence prevention interventions; exact matching on key characteristics is potentially the optimal solution. Its utility in practice will depend on regular data updates and having an efficient mechanism for accessing the data for such purposes.

This article explores the relationship between value similarity and public trust in charitable organisations. Through a focus group interview and an empirical study based on a sample in the United Kingdom, findings show that value similarity between the public and charitable organisations is an important driver of trust in charities even when individuals lack in-depth knowledge of them. It is also an elemental domain of public trust in charities and makes the greatest contribution to explaining this concept. It is concluded that value similarity is the key to understanding and establishing public trust, which is essential for prosperity of the voluntary sector.

This paper provides an evaluation of a police pilot early-diversion scheme for adult females who were arrested for low-severity offences using a natural experiment design. The intervention is novel in that it diverts arrestees to a women's centre for assistance to address their criminogenic needs rather than process them through the criminal justice system. The intervention is timely and attractive given its rehabilitative features and its potential for reducing demand on the criminal justice system through community resolution. The study found a promising effect of the intervention on rates of rearrest and daily risk of rearrest over a twelve month follow-up period, but a higher frequency of rearrest among those of the intervention group who were rearrested. The findings are discussed in relation to the political context, theoretical background and police performance and the gendered dynamics of offending.

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of anonymised information sharing to prevent injury related to violence.

ObjectiveTo use longitudinal birth cohort data linked to police records to examine whether the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and police-recorded serious violence depends on the type, timing or duration of ACEs.
MethodsThe sample are 5070 participants (born 1991-1992) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children who allowed linkage to Avon and Somerset (A&S) local police data, lived in A&S from age 16-24 years, and had exposure and confounder data. The binary outcome (no, yes) is having a police record for a serious violence (SV) offence from age 16-24. ACEs were parent-reported from birth to age 11 and include measures of parental physical and emotional abuse. Logistic regression was used to examine associations between the timing of different ACEs and SV, adjusted for child sex, ethnicity, and family socioeconomic position.
Results6% of the participants had experienced physical abuse, 17% emotional abuse, and 121 individuals (2.4%) had at least one SV record. In adjusted models, there was evidence of an association between physical (OR 1.90, 95% 1.08-3.35) but not emotional (0.96, 0.60-1.54) abuse and risk of SV. Results suggest that those who experienced physical abuse in both early (<4 years) and later (4-11 years) childhood, or later childhood only, might have been at greater risk of SV than those who experienced it only during early childhood, although numbers were small and confidence intervals were consequently wide.
ConclusionResults to date suggest that associations with SV differ between ACE types, and that timing may be important. In our presentation, we will also present findings for other ACEs.

Objectives
• To compare self-reported and police-recorded serious violence using data from a longitudinal UK birth cohort linked to local (Avon and Somerset Constabulary) police records
• To assess the risk of police-recorded serious violence according to study participation status across the lifecourse
ApproachWe linked data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to local police records on charges, cautions and other out of court disposals. We compared the risk of self-reported serious violence at 8 time points from 15 to 25 years to police-recorded serious violence at these ages. We then compared the risk of police-recorded serious violence among those actively participating in ALSPAC to those not participating at various time points from pregnancy onwards. We used logistic regression to examine whether differences in risk could be explained by socio-demographic and family characteristics associated with ALSPAC participation.
ResultsThe sample included 12,662 participants who had received fair processing materials and had not opted out of linkage to police records. They linked to a total of 6,283 offences, of which 933 were classified as serious violence (involving a total of 530 individuals). Self-reported serious violence in the past year was particularly high at 15 years (23.5%); at other ages it ranged from 3.7% (22 years) to 8.7% (20 years). Police-recorded serious violence was lower at all ages, peaking at 1.0% at 17 and 18 years. The risk of police-recorded serious violence was higher among those not participating in ALSPAC than among active participants, particularly during adolescence and early adulthood. This difference was only partially explained by socio-demographic and other factors.
ConclusionA key advantage of linkage to police records is it enables outcomes to be measured irrespective of study participation status as relying only on active participants leads to bias. Combining self-reported and police-recorded outcomes allows us to derive measures of offending that take account of the biases inherent in each.

AbstractKnife crime remains a major concern in England and Wales. Problem-oriented and public health approaches to tackling knife crime have been widely advocated, but little is known about how these approaches are understood and implemented by police practitioners. To address this knowledge gap, this article draws on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 44 police personnel to consider the processes and challenges of applying problem-oriented and public health approaches to knife crime. Findings show that knife crime was seen as a complex social problem which would not be solved by 'silver bullets'; prevention was prioritised and the limitations of enforcement were widely acknowledged; there was an emphasis on understanding and responding to vulnerability and risk; discussion of 'holistic' and 'whole systems' approaches was evident (but these concepts were rarely defined); and the problem of serious violence was viewed as a shared, multi-agency issue that the police could not tackle alone. Various challenges were also evident, most notably around analysis of the drivers and patterns of knife crime and the evaluation of knife crime interventions. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for knife crime prevention and the implementation and advancement of problem-oriented and public health approaches to policing.

Background: Excess alcohol consumption has serious adverse effects on health and violence-related harm. In the UK around 37% of men and 29% of women drink to excess and 20% and 13% report binge drinking. The potential impact on population health from a reduction in consumption is considerable. One proposed method to reduce consumption is to reduce availability through controls on alcohol outlet density. In this study we investigate the impact of a change in the density of alcohol outlets on alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms to health in the community. Methods/Design: A natural experiment of the effect of change in outlet density between 2005-09, in Wales, UK; population 2.4 million aged 16 years and over. Data on outlets are held by the 22 local authorities in Wales under The Licensing Act 2003. The study outcomes are change in (1) alcohol consumption using data from annual Welsh Health Surveys, (2) alcohol-related hospital admissions using the Patient Episode Database for Wales, (3) Accident & Emergency department attendances between midnight-6am, and (4) alcohol-related violent crime against the person, using Police data. The data will be anonymously record-linked within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank at individual and 2001 Census Lower Super Output Area levels. New methods of network analysis will be used to estimate outlet density. Longitudinal statistical analysis will use (1) multilevel ordinal models of consumption and logistic models of admissions and Accident & Emergency attendance as a function of change in individual outlet exposure, adjusting for confounding variables, and (2) spatial models of the change in counts/rates of each outcome measure and outlet density. We will assess the impact on health inequalities and will correct for population migration. Discussion: This inter-disciplinary study requires expertise in epidemiology and public health, health informatics, medical statistics, geographical information science, and research into alcohol-related violence. Information governance requirements for the use of record-linked data have been approved together with formal data access agreements for the use of the Welsh Health Survey and Police data. The dissemination strategy will include policy makers in national and local government. Public engagement will be through the Clinical Research Collaboration-Cymru "Involving People" network, which will provide input into the implementation of the research.

Background Excess alcohol consumption has serious adverse effects on health and results in violence-related harm. Objective This study investigated the impact of change in community alcohol availability on alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms to health, assessing the effect of population migration and small-area deprivation. Design A natural experiment of change in alcohol outlet density between 2006 and 2011 measured at census Lower Layer Super Output Area level using observational record-linked data. Setting Wales, UK; population of 2.5 million aged ≥ 16 years. Outcome measures Alcohol consumption, alcohol-related hospital admissions, accident and emergency (A&E) department attendances from midnight to 06.00 and violent crime against the person. Data sources Licensing Act 2003 [Great Britain. Licensing Act 2003. London: The Stationery Office; 2003. URL: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/contents (accessed 8 June 2015)] data on alcohol outlets held by the 22 local authorities in Wales, alcohol consumption data from annual Welsh Health Surveys 2008–12, hospital admission data 2006–11 from the Patient Episode Database for Wales (PEDW) and A&E attendance data 2009–11 were anonymously record linked to the Welsh Demographic Service age–sex register within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank. A final data source was recorded crime 2008–11 from the four police forces in Wales. Methods Outlet density was estimated (1) as the number of outlets per capita for the 2006 static population and the per quarterly updated population to assess the impact of population migration and (2) using new methods of network analysis of distances between each household and alcohol outlets within 10 minutes of walking and driving. Alcohol availability was measured by three variables: (1) the previous quarterly value; (2) positive and negative change over the preceding five quarters; and (3) volatility, a measure of absolute quarterly changes during the preceding five quarters. Longitudinal statistical analysis used multilevel Poisson models of consumption and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) spatial models of binge drinking, Cox regression models of hospital admissions and A&E attendance and GWR models of violent crime against the person, each as a function of alcohol availability adjusting for confounding variables. The impact on health inequalities was investigated by stratifying models within quintiles of the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation. Results The main finding was that change in walking outlet density was associated with alcohol-related harms: consumption, hospital admissions and violent crime against the person each tracked the quarterly changes in outlet density. Alcohol-related A&E attendances were not clinically coded and the association was less conclusive. In general, social deprivation was strongly associated with the outcome measures but did not substantially modify the associations between the outcomes and alcohol availability. We found no evidence for an important effect of population migration. Limitations Limitations included the absence of any standardised methods of alcohol outlet data collation, processing and validation, and incomplete data on on-sales and off-sales. We were dependent on the quality of clinical coding and administrative records and could not identify alcohol-related attendances in the A&E data set. Conclusion This complex interdisciplinary study found that important alcohol-related harms were associated with change in alcohol outlet density. Future work recommendations include defining a research standard for recording outlet data and classification of outlet type, the methodological development of residence-based density measures and a health economic analysis of model-predicted harms.