By Angus Delaney,Melissa Cunningham

Copyright theage

In the early 2000s in Scotland, knife crime was prevalent and best illustrated by the number of victims sporting a “Glasgow smile” – the descriptor to scars around their mouth caused by blades.

“We didn’t just have a murder every weekend, we had sometimes two, three and four,” says McCluskey, who oversaw the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, which helped transform the country’s justice system.

She says the answer was to ignore those who weaponise youth crime for political purposes and start treating the scourge as preventing a public health crisis.

There was no magic bullet. McCluskey and her colleagues engaged with health services, employers, the courts, schools, politicians and the media, to seek early intervention measures and prevent young people starting a life of crime.