£100m cost of dealing with serious violence in Teesside is 'tip of the iceberg'
That's how much it cost the police and criminal justice system in five years
Last updated 1st May 2025
We are hearing how nearly £100 million has been spent dealing with serious violence in Teesside and it is 'just the tip of the iceberg.'
That is how much it costed the police and the criminal justice system in the five years to September 2023 - up from the year before where it was £81 million to October 2022.
John Holden, head of Cleveland Unit for the Reduction of Violence, said: "That is a lot of money and I would say if you were to take the real cost of an incident and you multiply it across what's happening across the region, I would say that's only a fraction of the cost.
"That doesn't take in the cost of account for example, the minute an individual suffers an injury from a knife-related assault, the category 1 response of the ambulance service dedicates an ambulance and if it's a heavy trauma, it would likely be more than just one. You're then drawing ambulance assets away.
"The general public would think that a simple stab wound so to speak would just be to go in and sew them up and it's not. You're taking up significant unscheduled resources in a hospital which could disrupt normal operating costs, which could then delay and backlog planned surgery and the cost of that I would suggest is immeasurable.
"I would say that's only the superficial cost because it's taking away the ability, let's say just of the police alone, if the police are dedicating resources to attending that crime, then they're not on the street doing neighbourhood policing, they're not reassuring the police, they're not in the community or in the schools.
"Every time we have an incident of that nature, that severity which is resource intensive across the entire partnership, routine business just takes another backstep. It's just one more issue that pulls resources away from what the general public would like to see."