A Hospital Tells Police Where Fights Happen, And Crime Drops

> When two gangs fight and people get injured but don't want the police to know about the location of the fight (an illegal clubhouse?),

Gangs tend to use social networks to organise fights. People in the UK tend to get wounds treated.

(http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2011/07/05130225/3)

> 89. Another innovative idea being taken forward is the sharing of 'anonymised' information collected at Accident and Emergency (A & E) departments in hospitals concerning the incidence of violence and use of weapons at particular geographical 'hotspots' so that police can track violence trends and take preventative measures. Many victims of violence do not report the crime to the police but do attend at A & E with their injuries. The National Violence Surveillance Network established by the Cardiff University Violence Research Group in England and Wales found that such measures led to decreased numbers of wounded victims attending A & E as a result of violence and a decrease in serious assaults reported to the police. A pilot study is underway in Lanarkshire hospitals along the same lines.

Here's what the Royal College of Nursing says about reporting crime: (http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/287793/03....). This mentions the Cardiff Model.

2006: (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-streets-of-sc...)

> But doctors have admitted that the vast majority of stab wounds treated in the city's hospitals go unreported to the authorities. The scale of the violence is feared to be much greater than officially acknowledged.

[...]

> Last September the United Nation's crime research institute said Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world. Scots were nearly three-times more likely to be the victims of violent assaults than people living in the United States. More than 50 per cent of knives found by the police in Scotland are seized in Glasgow. Stabbings account for half of all murders.

2011: (http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/shocking-rise-i...)

> According to the newly-published annual Global Study on Homicide, the homicide rate in Glasgow stood at 3.3 per 100,000, compared to 1.6 in the English capital.

> The report also shows Scotland’s homicide rate remains higher than in many other European countries, including England and Wales, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Figures for France were not available.

2013: (http://www.scotsman.com/news/glasgow-knife-crime-falls-by-a-...)

> There were 903 assaults involving blades in the period 2012-2013, compared with 1,439 the year before, a fall of 37 per cent. The rate is down 57 per cent since 2006-2007, when 2,138 knife attacks were recorded in the city.

> Officers have attributed the fall in knife crime to an increase in stop and search procedures across Glasgow. In November, 2007 the number of such searches carried out in the city was 4,356. Five years on, this figure has risen to 26,669.

Isn't this the case in the US as well, for injuries like gunshot wounds? Or is that just Hollywood telling me that?

Just don't lay off the analyst!

I agree that it's probably a bad idea to publish a story about this program.

I'm guessing the type of guys getting into fights in Cardiff bars are going to stop telling the hospital staff when they realize it could lead to their favorite bar getting targeted by the police or even shut down.

I think the Freakonomics authors talked about this study... the study's authors noticed there was some gaming of the statistics going on because while most stats dropped, the rate of certain offenses held steady. The stubborn offenses were the ones that were much trickier to reclassify as lower level crimes, like homicide or arson.