Fall in violent incidents ending up at A&E units
VIOLENCE resulting in emergency hospital treatment decreased in England and Wales in 2019, according to new data from Cardiff University.
The numbers of patients injured in violence who were treated in A&Es in 2019 dropped by 6.3% from 2018, the analysis found.
It is the steepest overall fall since 2015 and follows three years in which violence dwindled but knife injuries increased substantially, the study’s authors said.
In all, the number of people injured in violence and treated in A&Es in England and Wales has fallen 143,113 (45%) since 2010.
Professor Jonathan Shepherd, one of the report authors from the University’s Crime and Security Research Institute, said: “In all the concern about Covid-19, we mustn’t lose sight of other serious threats to public health.
“This reduction in serious violence last year, if the measures put in place in 2018/19 to achieve this are maintained, means towns and cities will be safer when we come out of this crisis.
“Violence which puts people in A&E in England and Wales has almost halved since 2010. This represents real progress.”
The authors cite several possible explanations for the decline in violence since 2018, including increases in police resources and targeting of knife crime, drug markets and specific locations.
“We know that targeted policing, based on anonymised information from A&Es, as well as police intelligence, doesn’t just reduce violence at a specific location but also in the area around it,” Professor Shepherd said.
“If the police target a particular crack house, club or premises, you tend to get this halo effect of prevention around that hotspot because of extra police presence, and that has an effect on behaviour.
“A lot of people involved in knife violence and the drug trade also tend to be versatile in their offending - they’re likely to be involved in other minor violence too, such as truancy or burglary, for example.
“This may well explain why targeting knife violence has prevented a lot of comparatively minor violence, too.”
In April 2019, the Home Office allocated more than £50m to police forces to strengthen their response to serious violence, in particular knife crime, the report said, enabling them to increase patrols, weapon sweeps, equipment for officers and overtime.
Professor Shepherd said this included the founding of 18 new violence reduction units across the UK, including one in Wales.
Experts from the university’s violence research group analysed data by age and sex from a sample of 111 A&E departments, minor injury units and walk-in centres across England and Wales which are part of Cardiff University’s National Violence Surveillance Network, over a 12-month period ending 31 December 2019.
The violence research group has published an annual report on trends in serious violence for the last 19 years.
In addition, it collaborated with the Office for National Statistics to produce its 2020 report on physical abuse of children.
An estimated 175,764 people attended these emergency NHS facilities with injuries sustained in violence in 2019 - 11,820 fewer than the previous year.
Violent injury of males and females declined by 6.6% and 5.6%, respectively, in 2019 compared with the previous year.
Decreases in violence among those aged 18-30 years (down 11.7%) and 31-50 years (down 9.3%) were also recorded.
However, the report also saw an increase in violent injury in people over 50, up 7.9% in 2019, from the previous year. “This increase is difficult to explain but it may be linked to steadily increasing alcohol consumption in this age group,” said Professor Shepherd.
“People who were in their 20s in the 1990s, when violence was at its peak, who might have been drinking a lot, fighting - those people are now in their 50s, so it may be that the behaviour and habits they formed back then have stayed with them to an extent.”
Similar to previous years, those most at risk of violence-related injury were males (more than twice at risk than females) and young adults (aged 18-30).
Violence-related A&E attendances were most frequent in March and August and on weekends.
“The overall message is that the public health benefits of good, targeted policing should never be forgotten or neglected. Good policing keeps people out of hospital, and out of A&E departments,” Professor Shepherd said, adding that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic would be reflected in next year’s report.
Violence which puts people in A&E in England and Wales has almost halved since 2010
Prof Jonathan Shepherd