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WHAT John Carnochan knows about violence he learned as a hardened detective on Scotland’s toughest streets.

Most of his 39 years in the police was spent in Glasgow’s ganglands where murder seemed a recreational pastime and sentiment was a weakness.

So when he says one of the keys to ending Scotland’s culture of violence could be paying mums and dads to look after their kids, it’s like finding a soft centre in a hard nut.

He talks about learning to care for one another, urges politicians to focus on enriching children’s lives, and most of all he wants children to be taught about good, positive relationships.

John said: “If you go to Polmont Young Offenders and take 10 young guys at random – guys in there for violent offences – and ask if they have witnessed violence at home, 10 hands would go up.

“Ask how many of them had a significant adult in their life, sometimes one or two hands would go up.

“If you’re born into a house with aggression, that’s what you learn. You don’t know any better.

“If you bring a child up in a war zone, you’ll create a warrior.”

The former Detective Chief Superintendent is one of two senior officers who founded the ground-breaking Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.

His colleague Karyn McCluskey is now its director.

The project, which is being widely copied by forces outside Scotland, is credited with cutting the country’s murder rate by more than half in 10 years, from 142 when it was launched in 2004 to 61 last year.

Its pioneering work with gang members – drawing in housing services, social work, health agencies and educators to tackle the problem – seemed to prove the VRU theory that violence is preventable, not inevitable.

So John, who retired from the force two years ago, knows what he’s talking about.

He has just released his book Conviction, about the creation and successes of the unit.

And he’s convinced that the way forward is to change the childhood experiences of kids born into violence.

John said: “One of several light bulb moments I had at the unit happened at a dinner with a professor of psychiatry who had studied aggressive children.

“I asked him why some kids learned to be violent and others didn’t. He said I had to think about it in a different way – why did some children learn not to be violent. I realised exactly what he meant.

“Even at the peak of the gang fighting in Glasgow’s Easterhouse, only a small percentage of young men were involved.

“I worked with guys in the police who’d been born and brought up in Easterhouse.

“I knew social workers, teachers, health workers who grew up there and weren’t involved in gangs, they didn’t have chib marks on their faces or criminal convictions.

“They had learned not to be violent because of what was going on behind their front door.

“They had good early years experiences, formed good relationships with people and learned other ways of dealing with problems.”

John, a holder of the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service, is now a member of the Scottish Government Early Years Task Force, committed to making Scotland the best place to grow up.

He believes there’s still some way to go.

He said: “The most important years in a child’s life are the years up to age three.

“If a mum-to-be is living with an aggressive partner or abusing alcohol or drugs, that affects the baby from even before it’s born.

“The optimal time for learning crucial skills like language and problem solving is up to three.

“You can still do it later on, but the best time to do it is in those early years.

“I discovered evidence which shows an economic argument to this. It says that for every pound you spend in the early years, you’d need to spend between £7 and £11 in adolescence to get the same result.

“I’d rather see 1000 more health visitors in Scotland than 1000 more cops on the streets.

“That would be a really clever way of changing things.”

John says he’s fed-up hearing politicians argue over commitments to increase the availability of childcare.

He would like to see money used to support parents by offering two years paid leave from work, allowing them to be around for those vital formative years.

That, says John, would be an investment in all of our futures.

He added: “The reason politicians are so keen to provide extra childcare is not about children, it’s so mums can go back to work.

“Women going back to work boosts the economy but you have to make childcare as cheap as possible because so many women are not paid what they’re worth and are essentially working to put their kids in nursery.

“But they have financial commitments so they need to get back to work.

“We should be paying parents to be at home with their children in the earliest years.

“Offer a basic wage for two years which could be shared between mum and dad.

“That’s saying, ‘We value you being with your children and we value what you do with them.’”

Not that he’s declaring that a woman’s place is back in the home. He says if mums really want to

go back to work, they should.

But they shouldn’t be forced by money pressures.

He added: “Right now, there’s no real choice not to go back to work. We need to rebalance that.

“There’s a cost in that, but it’s an investment and we need to see it that way. We should be trying to get our relationships right, not the economy.”

Conviction: Violence, Culture and a Shared Public Service Agenda is published by Argyll www.postcards

fromscotland.co.uk