can you cut crime by being kinder to criminals? cheers for coming. it's really good to see you, pal, all right? see you soon. take care. can you prevent violence by giving more help to troubled children? are you all right? as the rest of the uk has struggled with rising levels of knife and gun crime, scotland says its public health approach has dramatically reduced violence. they say a leopard cannae change its

spots, but the leopard can change. if we can prevent the crime in the first place, we don't need to have all these victims. with cities like london and birmingham now adopting this approach, panorama's been given unique access to scotland's violence reduction unit. i just want to know if this is something that happens more often than you'd like. tonight on panorama, i've come to scotland to investigate what the public health approach really m ea ns and whether it really works. i was carrying a lockback knife daily from 11 years of age. and drinking alcoholically from about 12 years of age. i spent my 16th birthday, my 18th birthday and my 21st in here. all i done was just violence with violence, with violence. running about the east end of glasgow like a cut—throat pirate and, erm... just a pure lethal absence of hope in my life, man. coming hame one night and someone was to walk in my path and i ended up getting stabbed nine

times. so i go into a&e. i had a season ticket for it. two people in pink t—shirts came out to see us. now, two people in pink t—shirts come in and see you in a&e, right... one, you think you're tripping. laughter two, you know they're no' coppers. and the guy knelt down beside my bed and said to us, "how are you doing, mate? i work for the navigator programme "for the violence reduction unit." it was one of the first times i can ever remember somebody saying, "can i help you with anything?" the violence reduction unit or vru is part of police scotland. working in communities, hospitals and prisons, vru projects try to prevent people getting trapped in a life of crime. for callum, meeting the vru's navigators team was a turning point. so i end up speaking to the navigators about getting sober, and recovery and all that. they pointed me in the right direction.

ninewells hospital in dundee, where navigators have just started to work in a&e. the navigators offer help and advice to people who've just been involved in violence. it's saturday night. a man who's just been in a fight has been brought in by police. navigators like tam begbie try to calm things down. he's ex—forces. having served in afghanistan, he's used to defusing stressful situations. it's myjob just to go around, having a wee blether with folk who are coming in... a wee bit of distress. i remember getting kicked in the face. i remember getting volleyed in the face. i remember trying to run. so this is just kind of wrong place, wrong time for you, mate. is that what you're saying? 10096. once they're discharged, navigators can put patients in touch with services to help with things like employment, housing and mental health. what's it been like having navigators on your watch the last few weeks? do you know, they are able to do things that we can't do.

we don't have that time. wee bit of water. they're there to do it. they're very visible with their pink shirts! so, yeah, i think that's a good thing. dinnae think about the retaliation route at all, mate, because you'll chuck absolutely everything you've got away. have a real think about that because actions have got consequences. what you need to think about, mate, is your ain future. and i've got my card here, all right? we can maybe chat about some sensible decisions, mate, huh? no problem at all, mate. no problem at all. this man's not yet followed up tam's offer of help, but a study found that patients who do engage are much less likely to come back to a&e, saving both nhs and police time. i'm sure there'll be people who will say, "hang on a moment. they have a choice." yeah.

"i don't choose. i've had suffering in my life and i don't choose "to go out and get rip—roaring drunk and end up in here." when it comes down to it, nobody chooses to be in these situations... or chooses to be hurt or injured to the point where they need to come to a hospital. we're offering them a level of support that they might never have had in their life at all, ever. in some people's cases, to be a wee voice of reason impartial to the situation and non—judgmental towards the reason that they're in the hospital, is the difference between life or death. like other vru schemes, navigators focus on the causes of crime. but when the vru was first set up 15 years ago, the priority was tougher policing.

blood on the pavement. a sight more common in scotland than anywhere else in the developed world. that's according to a united nations study, which interviewed crime victims in 21 different countries. in 2005, there were 39 homicides in glasgow alone. the police cracked down on the city's gangs with increased stop—and—search and tougher sentences. but then they decided to look at the causes as well. karen mccluskey, former head of intelligence analysis for strathclyde police, was one of the founders of the vru. there wasn't a police officer i met who actually said, "we can fix this." they said, "look, we can keep a lid on the pot. "we can absolutely arrest people but that's not fixing it." we sort of really started to look at it like a public health issue, like a disease. really? what, violence was a disease? well, it does. we started to look about how it was transmitted. you know, you're brought up in an angry, aggressive home so you almost become infected. so we started to look at it like, "what would prevention look like?" this new public health approach seemed to be working in some american cities. violence could be reduced, they hoped, by treating offenders

with compassion and offering them more support. we said, "look, you can phone this number 2a hours a day, 365 days "a year, and we'll be out to you within, you know, 2a hours "with a plan for you within seven days." we were overwhelmed, just by the amount of people whojust said, "i'm done. i've just had enough." in the next 14 years, homicide rates in glasgow fell by more than two thirds — from 39 in a year to ii. soon, the vru's public health approach was introduced in other organisations, including schools, social services and prisons. polmont young offenders institute just outside edinburgh. since 2008, youth crime in scotland has almost halved. these teenagers are a priority for the vru.

i got a six—year sentence. what was that for? a serious assault, aye? stabbing. mm—hm. since the navigators stepped into callum's life, he's become a mentor. his visits are part of a two—week course offered to all inmates here. all credit to callum for making the choice to turn his life around, and he would happily say that he needed support. i mean, i need support in my daily life. you know what i mean? i'm meant to be a police officer, i'm meant to be an adult. i need support. we all do. julie's a police officer who works inside polmont to try to prepare these young men for life on the outside. what support would you be looking for on release? maybe it needs more awareness and maybe more groups like that to help you guys have a structure and routine, something that gradually reinstates them back into community so they don't go back to what they were doing. aye. so far, around 300 young men have been through the course.

polmont says they reoffend much less than those who haven't, though the programme hasn't yet been independently evaluated. can i come in and see you all? aye. yeah? rhys is nine months into a two—year sentence for knife crime. i stabbed somebody. so, iwas... i was one of the lucky ones. in what sense? i didnae kill the person i stabbed. i could've put that knife a millimetre higher or lower or however, and it could have been the end of him and i could be looking instead of two years...20. what were your circumstances at the time? i grew up in secure units and in care and things like that, so i'm familiar with this sort of environment. so my mum has been in prison all her life. i've seen my mum once since i've came in here, and it was an inter—prison visit. so it was a visit with another prisoner. rhys, that's so tough. imean, just... yeah, but it's...it‘s true, innit? so... i still wake up every morning and i'm still behind bars.

i still... i'm reminded every day of what i done. but what's polmont given you, then, and all the help you've had from julie and the team? it's changed my mind—set on violence, on drugs, alcohol... even alcohol. alcohol was my best friend. you know what i mean? just to get rid of what's going on in there. so just everything. everything's changed. as inmates get closer to release, some get offered individual help by specialist police teams. how long have you been in now? 19 months. 19 months you've done in here. that's a long time, pal, eh? lindsey's been a police officer for 28 years. she works with kevin, a former armed robber and heroin addict. they're part of violent offender watch or vow, a police team trying to cut reoffending rates. cheers for coming. it's really good to see you, pal, all right? kevin and lindsey are heading to edinburgh to pick up 18—year—old jordan — not his real name —

who was released on bail from polmont yesterday. he's been bailed to his granny‘s address so, cos he got released on a supervised bail, he has to agree to conditions. one of these conditions is checking in with his social worker, and today he's late... we'lljust go straight in the car, right? ..which is where kevin and lindsey step in. we're going to take you up to grindlay court here. he'll probably want to just see you for five minutes just to touch base with you. jordan's bail conditions mean he's also on a curfew. he has to be home all night from 7pm. the team have found that intensive support in the first few days makes the biggest difference in cutting reoffending. after spending most of the day withjordan, kevin and lindsey are taking him home.

so when you buy this pizza the night, you said you're getting juice. is that alcohol-free? aye. cheers for the costa and that. it's much appreciated. listen, you look after yourself. right, look afteryourself, pal. i'll be in touch, pal, all right? i'll gie you a phone, all right? just as long as you're there to receive the call. hopefully what we've done today has took a bit of stress away. but within the next 72 hours, he could change. i hope he's had a good weekend. it's been two days. kevin's trying to get in touch withjordan. phone's off. phone's off? mm—hm. he's not answering his phone, so they decide to pay him a visit. how are you doing, mate, all right? yeah. cool. so how was the weekend? you get a pizza? aye. i went for my first pint yesterday,

too. your first pint? how was that? it was all right. i had a few games of pool and that. was that your first legal pint? aye, obviously. he's managed the first three days without breaching his curfew, now kevin and lindsey want to help him get back on his feet. what would you like to be daeing? working. where? like, on a building site or something. i think what we'll dae is, in the next few weeks, see if we can get you training. it's what you do now, moving forward, that matters, eh? it's up to jordan whether he stays in contact with kevin and lindsey. unlike probation officers, they have no power to impose sanctions. only around half of those approached by the vow team sign up, but those who do consistently reoffend far less. hello. vow project, edinburgh. ewan speaking. phillipa? hi! what's unusual about the vow project is that it teams up police officers with ex—prisoners, something which initially

caused its own tensions. it was alien to me. and i'm not even going to lie and say it wasn't, ok? it was. it was like, "who am i working with here? " i'm like, "really?!" i was concerned about working with them. initially, i was like, "it's the polis. "they want information, they're up to something." the trust wasnae there. and they said, "you know, kevin, you could possibly break down these barriers. "and we want to help." police scotland are taking a risk, taking on a former armed robber, drug addict, to come and work alongside them. i was also taking a reputational risk cos i've got to go back to the community and tell everybody i work with police officers. an independent study found that involving ex—cons doubled the numbers who engaged, leading to an 80% reduction in reoffending. the vow project estimates that's meant savings for police, courts and the prison service of around £8 million. if somebody watching this programme says, "hang on a moment. you're an armed robber, you're a drug user, "and now we're expected to bring you in and be nice to these kids?" you know, this is softjustice. part of the revolving door of prisons is people have a dream

to come out of prison and not offend again. what happens is they come out, they get caught back up in the same stuff and they go back in prison. most of the guys have experienced childhood trauma, such as separation, loss of parents through bereavement... you know, horrific stories. what we're doing is no' soft justice, it's no' a soft approach. it's a caring, compassionate approach. key to the public health approach is understanding how a traumatic childhood may be more likely to draw a young person into violence and crime. it's more about the understanding of why people are involved in the criminaljustice process. why do people get into crime in the first place? we do that understanding and we ask the question, "what can i do to help you?" which, as you're speaking, i'm thinking, "that is quite unusual to be hearing that from the perspective "of a police officer whose job is to carry outjustice, to lock people up." but if we can prevent the crime in the first place and prevent it happening, then we don't need to lock them up. and you don't need to have all these victims.

since the vru was set up, there has been a huge shift in attitude across scotland in terms of how best to tackle violent crime. and there's no question — crime rates have gone down, notjust for homicides. the question is how much of that can be attributed directly to the vru and its public health approach. criminologist susan mcvie has researched the effectiveness of the vru. she's shown that, while individual projects have had a clear impact, it can't claim all the credit for the reduction in violence. it's very difficult to know how much of the violence reduction was due to specific things that were being led by, for example, the violence reduction unit and other wider global or political or societal changes. most of the reduction in violence has been seen around young men committing acts of violence in public places with weapons, which was exactly the group that the violence reduction unit were trying to target. so i think most of the success is down

to the fact that young people just don't live the same sort of lifestyles that they did 20 years ago. they spend much more time living in a virtual world rather than a real one. and it's a challenge for the vru to sustain its impact. after dramatic falls in its first decade, in the past few years violence has been creeping up again. come on in. thank you very much. niven rennie is the director of the violence reduction unit and a former superintendent with 30 years' policing experience. why is violent crime going back up again? if this has been so successful, are you not concerned that these figures appear to be on an upward trend? i wouldn't sit as director of violence reduction unit and not be concerned, but not to the stage that i think scotland is falling back to where we were in 2005. i think we need to recognise where we were. but it does look like it's not just a spike, that it has been going up in the last few years, hasn't it?

we've just gone through so many years of austerity so public sector services are being cut. the gap between rich and poor has become wider. and as numerous studies have shown, where the gap is wider the violence goes up. if we want to make a long term change, we need to address the social ailments that are facing the country. no longer a "lock them up and throw away the key" approach but a mind—set which says, "we're going to give people "opportunity, we're going to invest in deprived communities, "we're going to give people that equality that they're looking for." located on the outskirts of glasgow is oakwood primary school in easterhouse. music, chatter it's the heart of a community which has been transformed in the past 15 years. music stops oh! give yourselves a clap! the area used to be notorious for its gangs. at one point, around 55 were terrorising local streets. it's still one of the most deprived areas of the uk, but violence here has dramatically fallen. this area here where the school was built actually is an area

where they would have pitched battles. there would be the gang fights. they would occur up and down the slopes here that the school was built on and into that area there. if someone came running towards you and they were pulling out a knife, if you didn't have a knife on you, you had to run. single parent steven has a daughter at the school. as a boy, he was part of an easterhouse gang. see the boys we fought with, over there? yeah. their kids come to this school. we talk to each other and that now, because the way we look at it is we only ever fought because that was the normal thing to do. i know it doesnae sound right but was the normal thing to do. the police staged a major crackdown on the easterhouse gangs in 2005 and then the vru started working with the community. schools like oakwood adopted the vru's public health approach, offering families counselling and other support. heather, a mother of nine, has joined oakwood's after—school family club. the easterhouse of ten years ago to the easterhouse now

is completely different. family club now isnae just me bringing my family. we sit there and sit round a table and have dinner. that's important. one of the best things that came out of our school is that i've used a counselling service for nearly a year and a half. at the end of it, i was like, "that literally changed my life," which then meant it changed their life because i became a better mammy through that. children, including heather's daughter, are taught effective ways to settle their differences. could you guys just take a seat here, please? thank you for coming here today to discuss your issues. morning. ok, can we get these hoodies off, please. blazers on. across scotland, many schools

morning. ok, can we get these hoodies off, please. blazers on. across scotland, many schools have adopted the vru's public health approach. ten years ago, the head of education in glasgow told all schools to change the way they deal with students. she said they had to be more nurturing. good morning. how are you today? have you had breakfast? here in west glasgow, drumchapel high has a programme called second start breakfast. latecomers are welcomed, rather than being told off. morning. how are we? what happened this morning, darling? oh, i know that feeling! you have fun. see you later. what's happened this morning? you slept in. are you all right? have you had breakfast this morning? yeah. yeah? right, 0k. are you going to go to home room? yeah, right.

so it's quarter to ten, and you're not reprimanding these kids for sleeping in, whatever reasons they're giving. no. so, i mean, really what they're saying is they're sleeping in but actually what's happened is nobody else is maybe waking up in the house either. teachers have also been given new techniques to deal with pupils disrupting lessons. connor's i3. his behaviour can be challenging. can you be careful with that, please? i'll put it away for you. ijust don't want to see you get hurt, and i don't want to get hurt by a ruler either. ok? so, if we're all going to wake up and be energised, what have you got next? oh, connor... now, that's definitely a warning. could you go and pick it up for me, please, and put it away? can you please mind your language? do you need to go outside to calm down for a wee bit? yeah. yeah? do you want to go outside and calm down? thank you. connor, don't disrupt the learning, please. thank you very much. good decision.

i think the traditional method is maybe a bit more flipped on its head because i could've had a situation where just a high amount of swearing, kicking of furniture, slamming of doors and nothing being achieved for him. connor, could ijust grab a wee word with you before you leave? what we can't have is the swearing and the disrupting others. aye. i'm kind of coming at it from the angle, "are you ok?" for example, today, when i asked, "do you want to go and have a minute? go and chill out. have a minute. " and that to me is very different to, "your behaviour is not appropriate. "can you please leave the classroom ? " amy. sorry. amy's 14 and can also struggle in the classroom. but the school offers a special learning and development room for young people who need extra support. i couldnae handle being in classes as much as everybody else could. you've not got so many people screaming in yourear, and, like, the teacher can help

you a lot mair than what you can in an actual normal classroom. which person related to christmas was born in israel? jesus. in first year, when i was in school, i lost my granny and it kind of got to me where theyjust try to help me as much as they can. they could have literally kicked me out in the first year or second year but they still kept me on because the way they see it is they want to help us instead ofjust flinging us out where we're just going to end up to nothing. a child who's excluded before they're 12 is four times more likely to be in prison by the time they're 22, and all scotland's schools have been encouraged to stop excluding children. we've made the decision that we were really, really trying to stamp out exclusions because it wasn't helping, it wasn't making a difference. the behaviour wasn't improving. at drumchapel high, exclusions have now dropped from over 350 a decade ago to just nine temporary exclusions last year. that traditional approach to learning — "if you don't conform to what i'm offering, therefore you are out the door," that doesn't help because actually what you're doing then is you are creating this barrier.

school is a place that doesn't want me. critics point out that scotland ranks below england in international education league tables, but its exclusion rates — both temporary and permanent — have dropped dramatically in the past ten years while english exclusions have steadily risen. it's clear scotland has become very different from the rest of the uk in terms of how it tackles both violent crime and manages behaviour in schools. but south of the border, several police forces are now setting up their own vrus. you've had lots of politicians coming up here, you're being asked to go down and speak across the uk — what are the most important things that need to be done elsewhere in the uk to follow your lead? i think narrative has to change. it has to be a more understanding, compassionate narrative. and an education programme is so important. you need to make sure that young

people are growing up with this anti—violence message. i've been to a lot of violence reduction units down south and they all get it, and they all want to make a difference, and they all say it can be applied there. but different cities have different challenges. i don't think it's the right thing to say that you can take a model from anotherjurisdiction and just apply it anywhere else. some of the solutions and strategies that were developed were based on a really strong understanding of what the underlying problems were, so i think it would be suitable to take a public health approach to reducing violence in other jurisdictions but you couldn't necessarily achieve the same level of success with what happened in scotland. and she points out that scotland itself still has a long way to go. scotland's gone from having a very high violence rate to a violence rate that's actually much more comparable with other countries. scotland still has a higher assault rate than england and wales, so we haven't cracked the violence problem. one person who has benefited from the public health approach is jordan. it's been three months since kevin

and lindsey first met him. how are you doing, mate? all right. and he's still on the programme, and staying with his gran. how was your weekend? it was fine. just staying in. staying in? i stay in, go to snooker, go to the gym, go for a swim, and that's basically that. what help have they given you that you might not have had otherwise? they took me to my appointment, made sure i got there. if i want to phone and talk, if i was angry or whatever, take me out for a coffee and that, just to basically speak. he's got a chance to prove himself. we've got him off the streets, that's the main thing. i feel like it took me to go to prison and come back out to get that support. faced with a violent crime epidemic, scotland threw convention out of the window and adopted a more radical and more compassionate approach. the vru challenges every

level of scottish society to think differently about violence and its root causes, to treat it notjust as a matter of criminal justice but crucially as a public health issue. there are still questions to be answered as to whether the success of the violence reduction unit can be sustained in scotland and indeed replicated across the rest of the uk, but the people in scotland i've spoken to believe passionately that this public health approach will help a generation of children and young people to escape that cycle of violence their parents lived through.

welcome to bbc news — i'm mike embley. president trump signs an executive order that he says will hold china accountable for its actions in hong kong. hong kong will now be treated the same as mainland china. no special privileges, no a special economic treatment, and no export of sensitive technologies. the government in london also takes a swipe at beijing — ordering tech from the chinese company huawei to be stripped from the uk's telecoms network. tears from ghislaine maxwell as the former girlfriend ofjeffrey epstein is refused bail. she will go on trial nextjuly, charged with helping him abuse young girls.