The VRU have announced a £5m plan to tackle gangs in Glasgow’s East End.

CIRV – the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence – has been 18 months in the planning and is based on initiatives in Cincinnati and Boston.

With £1.6m over two years coming from the Scottish Government and a further £3.4m funding provided in services and in kind, the initiative brings together partners from justice, government, community safety services, housing, careers, education, social work, health and the community to tackle gang violence.

The initiative works by treating the gang as a unit rather than as individuals and using the gang themselves to address their own behaviour.

Following intelligence gathering, gang members are approached by CIRV street level workers offering help to find an alternative to the gang lifestyle. They are then invited to voluntarily attend a self-referral session. Groups of different gangs are brought in to attend a carefully scripted meeting where they are addressed by a senior police officer, an A&E consultant, members of their community and the parent of a victim, among others. The senior officer assures the gang members that they will all leave after the meeting, but that if any of them – including members not present – commits an assault/murder, they will pursue the whole group, not just the individual. This has the effect of pushing gangs to police their own behaviour. The A&E consultant talks about the problems of trying to patch up victims and offenders, the community members speak about the damage the gang is doing to the community and the victim’s parent tells of the impact gang violence has had on their life.

The gang members are then given the freephone number of a “one stop shop” where they are given help to access education, health services, careers advice, social services and diversion if they want to turn their lives around.

Self-referral sessions are repeated as and when necessary and the intervention is supported by thorough intelligence gathering and operational activity.

Over 150 gang members attended the first two self-referral sessions, held at Glasgow Sheriff’s Court on October 24. To date 70 have taken up the offer of help, with more coming forward every day.

If the project is a success, it will be rolled out to other areas of the city.

“Our message is clear,” said Detective Chief Inspector Andy McKay, who heads up the initiative for The Violence Reduction Unit (VRU)

“The violence must stop.

“Young men involved in gangs are one of the most at risk groups in Glasgow and the corrosive effect of their behaviour on their communities is profound. We want to help these young men turn their lives around – we want them educated, we want them working and most of all we want them safe. If they choose to continue with the gang lifestyle, then we can and will pursue them. We know who they are, we know where they live, we know who they hang out with and what they get up to and we will act on that information.” He added:

“We have drawn on the Boston and Cincinnati models for CIRV. However, we would never take on an initiative wholesale – just because something works in the States does not mean it will automatically work here. That’s why we have spent the past few months refining the initiative to fit the situation in Glasgow, work that will be ongoing as the initiative moves forward.”