Following the introduction of Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) – a civil order announced under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022 – the government commissioned research consultancy firm Ecorys to evaluate the outcomes from a 2-year pilot of the policy.
In this paper, we review the pilot evaluation by comparing its findings with predictions made in our original position paper, grading them on a scorecard using the same metric as His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services’s PEEL assessments of police force performance.
Our scorecard found that:
- SVROs had no statistically significant impact on violent re-offending during the pilot period, meaning ‘the intended deterrent effect of SVROs on serious violence was therefore not observed’
- SVRO recipients were... significantly more likely to be stopped and searched (20.9%)... this increase may be ‘a reflection of increased police attention and detection, rather than a change in the underlying offending behaviour’
- [O]fficers conducted SVRO stop-searches with ‘varying levels of frequency’, some searching SVRO recipients ‘every time they encounter[ed] the individual’. However, very little was found, and there was just one stop and search incident where the SVRO legal power was used and a weapon was found, yielding a find rate of 0.3% from 315 searches
- The absence of rehabilitative elements in the order was ‘widely seen as a barrier to deterrence and sustained behaviour change’
- [T]here was no robust quantitative evidence of ethnic disproportionality in the SVRO process
- [T]he most common reason for eligible individuals not receiving an SVRO where an application was made was rejection in court by the judiciary, often due to insufficient evidence or lack of necessity/proportionality
- The evaluation did not reference the use of lower quality evidence in SVRO applications that did reach the courts, but the possibility of judges considering otherwise inadmissible evidence in their deliberations cannot be ruled out
You can read our review and view the scorecard below.