Policing Insight and PolicingTV Publisher Bernard Rix recently met Niven Rennie, for a Policing Friendship Tour walk-and-talk in the gardens of the National Trust for Scotland’s “Robert Burns Birthplace Museum” in Ayrshire. 

Niven is the Director of the renowned, award-winning Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, a national centre of expertise in tackling violence. The SVRU follows a ‘public health’ approach which treats violence as a disease. The Unit seeks to diagnose and analyse the root causes of violence in Scotland, then develop and evaluate solutions which can be scaled-up across the country. 

Niven and Bernard discuss the past and future work of the Unit, plus explore how other jurisdictions seeking to emulate the Unit’s success can avoid the pitfalls and build on the successes.