The politics behind London knife crime

Over the last week there has been a deluge of disturbing reports of gun and knife crime in London. This has come at a time when many parts of the country are preparing to elect Councillors and so a number of political voices have been raised to explain such incidents. A few days ago David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham) spoke out claiming among other factors, that cocaine supplies are a key part in the equation, that Eastern European powers lie behind some of the gangs and that many of the root causes are problems emanating from the Government. He also criticised both the Mayor of London and the Home Secretary for ignoring the murders in his constituency. At the same time Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Chingford and Woodford Green) wrote this article in the Daily Telegraph (as usual its behind the paywall) giving a historic explanation for the way in which gangs control vulnerable young people based on research carried out by his Centre for Social Justice in 2009. This focused on the way in which urban gangs act as surrogate families to their members and how external agencies need to challenge the groups and engage with the vulnerable young people in order to remove their dependency on the powers that lie behind the gangs themselves. However he interspersed the research parts of his article with his personal and anecdotal view that the Mayor of London needed to bring together the various London Boroughs impacted by these events in a cross party manner.

One of the clear facts in the Telegraph article was a graph of reported knife crime incidents in London as recorded by the Metropolitan Police. This showed a steady level of reports around 2008 which rose a small amount in the period 2011-12 and then began to drop substantially until 2014 when they levelled off until 2016 when they began to rise as quickly as they had fallen and they are now at a similar level this year as in the same period during 2011. It must be very inconvenient for politicians when such tragic events take place in the weeks before elections due to the way in which certain people’s votes might be influenced by such news. I have met David Lammy and I know people who know Iain Duncan-Smith reasonably well. In both cases despite their political differences and in the case of Duncan-Smith his deeply disturbing policies in other areas which have contributed to the social pressure on society, I know that each do have a genuine interest in resolving these gang related matters. However because ultimately they have to go through elections and have to remain as selected by their parties, it is clear that anything they say or do, is either aimed at or interpreted through a number of different lenses. Observing these crime statistics via a graph and seeing their cyclical nature can easily lead people to overlook the personal impact of such events. These affect the person who held the knife, the person who had it thrust into them, and the many people who are left afterwards to literally pick up the pieces and attempt to put them back together and at the same time prosecute the guilty person(s). Although here in Sussex we are impacted far less by gangs or knife crime, the social causes of such activity in large urban settings are just as present here and lead to other actions which are just as damaging for those involved. 

We need all of our politicians, local and national to find ways of breaking out of their party political imposed strait jackets, and instead focus on their community’s needs, even if this is at the expense of their party’s priorities. One of the issues which is much further down the track than the statistics of knife crimes in London (or much further up the track) is the way in which the under 18 year olds who are prosecuted and imprisoned for such crimes are treated. A recent decision which is long overdue is for the Ministry of Justice to review the use of custody for crimes carried out by children based in London. As if the Government suddenly discovered a fact that many of us have been aware of for decades, they have worked out that young people who are held in custody, a long way from their family homes are much more likely to reoffend than if they are held more locally. Here in Sussex, we have every reason to demand that the MOJ comes up with a solution for our young people who end up in custody, bearing in mind the nearest youth offending facility is in Middlesex. Perhaps our politicians can put aside their differences, pool their influence and call for a local solution!