The UK government has recognised Brookman's expertise in the field of homicide research and has invited her to participate in a number of key events. For example, in 2019, Brookman was invited to give evidence to the Inquiry on Knife Crime. Her research influenced the debate on the structural and situational causes of homicide and violence, and the importance of meaningful engagement with young people in the design and delivery of prevention programmes. Many aspects of Brookman's evidence are reflected in the final report now being considered by government.
In 2019, Professor Fiona Brookman participated in a Ministerial Roundtable on ‘best practice in law enforcement’ as part of the Prime Minister’s Serious Youth Violence Summit. Her recommendations were instrumental in changing policy and practice. For example, based on her evidence, a young person with experience of violence now sits on the Government's National Security Implementation Group on Serious Violence, enhancing the group’s understanding of youth violence and how best to respond to it. Fiona also gave oral and written evidence to the British Council Youth Select Committee Inquiry on Knife Crime in 2019. This enabled her research to influence the debate on the structural and situational causes of homicide and violence and the importance of meaningful engagement with young people in the design and delivery of prevention programmes. Many aspects of her evidence are reflected in the final report, Youth Select Committee - Our Generation's Epidemic, Knife Crime.
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Professor Fiona Brookman (middle)
Professor Brookman urged Government to engage young people and others close to them in the design of knife crime reduction strategies. In response the Home Office stated:
"We agree [entirely with this and that it’s important to have youth voices and those with experience of gang-life and growing up in violent communities informing our response. For that reason, the Youth Advisory Forum invites young people – some of whom are former offenders and/or gang members – to one of the most senior government meetings on the issue, the National Security Implementation Group meeting on serious violence. These young people are given a seat at the table and the opportunity to present their thoughts directly to key decision-makers".
Nick Morgan, Senior Policy Researcher, Serious Violence Analysis Section, Home Office
Also as part of the Ministerial Roundtable, Brookman identified the need to engage early with members of diverse communities at the developmental stage of new crime prevention initiatives, in order to help to positively promote them.
"We agree that better understanding the relationship between police-community relations and key metrics like the number of crimes and clearance rate is important. This partly informed some of our pilot activity (around knife crime prevention orders, changes to stop and search etc) to ensure there is a qualitative element to the research: surveying community responses".
Nick Morgan, Senior Policy Researcher, Serious Violence Analysis Section, Home Office
In 2020, Brookman's insights on the Home Office Homicide Index were discussed at the Prime Minister chaired Taskforce on Criminal Justice. This led to new collaboration between Home Office statisticians and police to improve data quality and timeliness, and also increasing the availability and accessibility of data for academics. For example, a new data capture interface is being developed for police services to submit additional homicide data to the Home Office, which will enable more accurate determination of patterns and trends, and inform more bespoke prevention measures.
"Your help was important in the publication of our recent research report on homicide, which also included putting a significant amount of new homicide data into the public domain and hence available for academics. In addition work has also begun on trying to improve the accuracy and timeliness of data submitted to the Homicide Index to improve the quality of that database".
Nick Morgan, Senior Policy Researcher, Serious Violence Analysis Section, Home Office