Warning youngsters about the dangers of weapons and spotting those at risk of committing serious violence to stop them in their tracks are part of a package of actions to tackle serious violence unveiled by Labour’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

The new action plan sets out what Labour, together with police and local agencies, will do over the next three years to cut homicide, knife crime, gun and gang-related crime and sexual and domestic violence.

Key measures of the plan include:

* creating a presumption to prosecute those who are found carrying a knife and tougher sentences for knife crime;

* providing the police with 100 portable knife arches and 400 search wands immediately, and making more available over the next year to ensure this technology is available where needed across the country;

* a new £1 million campaign to challenge the 'glamour', fear and peer pressure that can drive youngsters to knife crime, and working with Be Safe to offer over 1 million young people access to workshops on the dangers of weapons;

* investing over £20 million over the next three years to support the rollout of multi-agency interventions and information sharing, involving local police, local councils, voluntary groups and health workers, across the country to manage and identify people at risk of committing serious violence as well as providing support for victims;

* increasing the number of Sexual Assault Referral Centres for victims of sexual violence from 19 to 48 to cover every part of the country; and

* greater protection of children from sex offenders - including a pilot in four police force areas (Cleveland, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and Warwickshire) to allow for the increased disclosure of child sex offenders' convictions to certain members of the public.

Labour’s Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said:

"Every shooting or stabbing, every rape, every child sexually abused, every case of someone suffering domestic violence is one too many. Serious violent crime accounts for 1% of all crime, but where it does occur, it devastates lives, blights communities with fear and causes terrible suffering not just for victims, but for their families and friends as well.

"We are determined not to let violent offenders get away with wrecking lives by stopping them committing crimes in the first place. That is why I am today pledging that by 2011, we will have reduced serious violent crime, including gun and gang-related violence, knife crime, sexual and domestic violence and improved the criminal justice response to these offences.

"We have made good progress - violent crime has fallen by 31% since 1997 and the risk of being a victim of serious violence remains extremely low. We have set tough targets for the police and local agencies to tackle serious violence, giving them more local decision making powers to find solutions to local priorities. The challenge now is to ensure that the good practice we have developed is applied as widely as possible, to the benefit of everyone in all communities."