Given the increased stabbings in Harrow and the probing question ‘why’, Harrow council Harrow Community Safety Strategy (2023 – 2026) becomes of specific interest.
The strategy informs that from December 2021 to December 2022, the number of notifiable offences in Harrow increased by 2.6% including knife crime increased by 24.1% (cases reported in 2023 might show a further increase).
Violence against the person is greater within the Greenhill ward, which includes the town centre and transport hubs, with a rate of 51 incidents per 1,000 residents in this ward, compared with the borough average of 21 incidents per 1,000 for the same period.
Parts of the Greenhill ward are now in Marlborough ward.
The strategy acknowledges the importance of addressing the issue of violence in the borough, including the knife crime, which encompasses all criminal offences committed using a knife or a bladed article as a weapon and can often to be linked with other issues such as drugs, gang involvement, organised crime and exploitation.
Intent to supply drugs has risen by over a third in 2022 in Harrow.
To address drugs and knife crime situations in the borough, the strategy does not seem to be drawing on the experiences of inadequacies in the previous strategies like in Wealdstone or the Harrow Substance Misuse Strategy 2015-2020 and Harrow Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2020‐2025.
Moreover, the council priorities – ‘tackling and reducing offences’ and ‘harm caused by drugs or reducing the number of violent incidents in the borough’ – have no outright focus on engaging with the diverse local communities to tackle the drug dealing and drug taking problems, despite the report highlights the Harrow Borough Context as ‘64% of our population come from a Black, Asian and Multi-ethnic background’.
No single service nor intervention can address these problems alone. Preventing and reducing the harm caused by drugs requires a whole system approach that focuses on addressing the ’cause and effect’, the drugs pushing and root causes of substance misuse, rather than treating the effects in isolation.
The strategy informs that from December 2021 to December 2022, the number of notifiable offences in Harrow increased by 2.6% including knife crime increased by 24.1% (cases reported in 2023 might show a further increase).
Violence against the person is greater within the Greenhill ward, which includes the town centre and transport hubs, with a rate of 51 incidents per 1,000 residents in this ward, compared with the borough average of 21 incidents per 1,000 for the same period.
Parts of the Greenhill ward are now in Marlborough ward.
The strategy acknowledges the importance of addressing the issue of violence in the borough, including the knife crime, which encompasses all criminal offences committed using a knife or a bladed article as a weapon and can often to be linked with other issues such as drugs, gang involvement, organised crime and exploitation.
Intent to supply drugs has risen by over a third in 2022 in Harrow.
To address drugs and knife crime situations in the borough, the strategy does not seem to be drawing on the experiences of inadequacies in the previous strategies like in Wealdstone or the Harrow Substance Misuse Strategy 2015-2020 and Harrow Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2020‐2025.
Moreover, the council priorities – ‘tackling and reducing offences’ and ‘harm caused by drugs or reducing the number of violent incidents in the borough’ – have no outright focus on engaging with the diverse local communities to tackle the drug dealing and drug taking problems, despite the report highlights the Harrow Borough Context as ‘64% of our population come from a Black, Asian and Multi-ethnic background’.
No single service nor intervention can address these problems alone. Preventing and reducing the harm caused by drugs requires a whole system approach that focuses on addressing the ’cause and effect’, the drugs pushing and root causes of substance misuse, rather than treating the effects in isolation.
Harrow Monitoring Group 
Harrow Community Safety? What strategy? Does it have any or is it floundering in the dark & desperately clutching at straws while lives are being lost on a daily basis through violence with families left grieving!
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