Can Brixton's 'hyperlocal' approach cut knife crime?

"Following his death, Jones Burrell took over the running of her son's boxing club, as a way to try to steer young people away from knife crime. But she says it is only recently that she has started to feel a sense of change. Teenage homicide, which hit record levels in 2021, is at its lowest in more than a decade and in the borough of Lambeth, police say knife crime offences have fallen by 35% in the past year."

"What's interesting is only 44 of those 1.5 million 'hexes' have a cluster of knife crime issues. In Lambeth, our hexagon is in Brixton town centre. The Home Office allocated over 2 million to be shared across those boroughs so police, local councils and other community groups could work together to find hyperlocal, targeted interventions."

Pastor Lorraine Jones Burrell, whose son Dwayne Simpson was fatally stabbed in Brixton in 2014, now runs his boxing club to redirect young people from knife crime. On the 12th anniversary of his death, she expresses cautious optimism as teenage homicide rates have fallen significantly from record 2021 levels. Lambeth borough has seen knife crime offences drop 35% in the past year. However, Brixton town centre remains designated as a knife crime hotspot by the Home Office through a "hex-mapping" programme that analyzes crime data across 1.5 million hexagon-shaped zones in England and Wales. Only 44 zones show knife crime clusters. The Home Office allocated over £2 million across five London boroughs for coordinated police, council, and community interventions targeting these specific areas.

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