Scarman Lecture 2025: How can we prevent weapons-enabled street violence – academic and policy debates

We are delighted to announce that the next Scarman Lecture will take place on Wednesday, 24 September 2025, at 5 p.m. Head of the College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Professor Teela Sanders will open this year's Scarman Lecture. 

Public place violence has been a core focus of government attention since the publication of the Serious Violence Strategy in 2018. At the heart the strategy was a desire to reduce serious violence – knife crime, gun crime and robbery – though public health focused approaches delivered via government funded violence reduction units. In this lecture an expert panel will discuss what contemporary patterns of violence look like in the UK and the challenges of delivering violence reduction to the public. Ultimately, we consider what types of interventions show promise and what directions policing and policy might take in future.

The expert panel will include:

Grace Strong, Director of Prevention, Leicestershire Police

Professor Andrew Newton, Professor of Criminology and Policing at Nottingham Trent University (NTU)

Tom Jewkes, Head of Programmes, Ben Kinsella Trust

Professor Matt Hopkins from the University of Leicester will chair this lecture. 

Moderated questions from the audience will also be catered for in the final 30 mins of the session. Please email lan11@le.ac.uk to submit any questions for the panel by the 21 September 2025.

This event will take place online and within the Peter Williams Lecture theatre. An e-invite will be sent shortly before the lecture takes place if you have booked a place online.

Accessible information for those attending in person:

Please contact the team for any accessibility requests. We will try our best to accommodate everyone as much as possible.

The lecture will be taking place in the Peter Williams lecture theatre which is on the lower basement level of the Fielding Johnson Building. There will be staff around to help direct everyone, there is a lift and accessible toilets.

Information on the accessibility of the space is in the below address:

https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/fielding-johnson-building-south-wing

A University of Leicester map of campus can be found at the below address:

https://www.le.ac.uk/maps/

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