Serious Violence Definition

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There is no national definition of serious violence. Under the Serious Violence Duty (SVD), specified authorities are required to agree a local definition that reflects the nature and prevalence of serious violence within their area. Taking an evidence-based approach, the definition should reflect the types of high-harm violence that have the greatest impact locally (source: UK Goverment).

The serious violence definition is used as a framework to help structure the Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA), which is a requirement of the duty. The analysis in the SNA is used to shape the response strategy and choice of interventions.

We co-ordinate the SNA on behalf of the SVD partners and Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs). As this is a shared definition, this fulfils the duty for CSPs.

The Humber VPP uses the World Health Organisation's definition of violence:

“The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group of community, that either results in or has a high likelihood or resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”

World Health Organisation

On an analytical level, this definition has been translated into measuring intentional injury by counting:

Emergency department attendances and admittances relating to a violent incident
Ambulance callouts relating to a violent incident
Subset of police-recorded crime

Crimes in this dataset flagged as domestic abuse have also been included due to the region’s high prevalence of this crime type.

Police-recorded violence committed against police officers and emergency workers is excluded from our core analysis of serious violence. While this does not diminish the seriousness or impact of the violence experienced, from an analytical perspective police and emergency workers respond to violent incidents, which could result in double counting.

You can also download an infographic showing the emergency care, ambulance callout and police-recorded violence included in the our serious violence definition.

Click to view infographic

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