Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice

The VRU has a strong partnership with Thames Valley Police, which has seconded officers and staff into the team to support delivery of our work across our central programme and projects.

The Law Enforcement & Criminal Justice worsktream is led by police officers and its work is focused on coordinating the effective and robust policing response to serious violence and knife crime.

The Law Enforcement strand coordinates the use of Home Office funding to deliver additional policing activity across the force area to target serious violence. This includes running weeks of intensive action to tackle knife crime, county drug lines, exploitation and supporting similar national enforcement initiatives.  The strand also delivers Operation Rasure, supporting local policing operations which tackle local problem areas and known offenders.

The Criminal Justice stand of the workstream supports the development of effective processes and disposals. This has included Out of Court Disposal routes into programmes of education and support, developing focussed deterrence programmes and initiatives such as mentors in custody suites.

The VRU working with Criminal Justice, Oxfordshire Children Social Care and the Youth Justice Service are piloting a new process to ensure effective information sharing when a young person has been arrested

DIVERT is a custody Intervention programme which is designed to reduce reoffending and has been funded by the TVP Violence Reduction Unit.

Operation Prelude is a focused deterrence programme, using the principles of problem solving, it is designed to focus activity on those individuals presenting the greatest risk to local communities and divert them away from offending.

A key priority of the Thames Valley Violence Reduction Unit’s strategy to reduce violence is to ensure those who commit violence are effectively brought to justice. In order to support this priority, the Violence Reduction Unit have initiated Op Rebus