With more than fifty murders in London alone this year, crime is rising up the political agenda. Today, Amber Rudd unveiled the government’s much anticipated strategy for dealing with violent crime.
Rudd’s argument is that drugs is the ‘biggest driver’ of this spike in violent crime. This strategy concentrates on what can be done to try and halt this drugs trading, and particularly the use of children as drug mules. There’s £11 million extra for early interventions designed to stop this happening and more money to try and tackle how the drugs trade is moving out from the big cities.
But the main political controversies are over whether the fall in police numbers and the decline in stop and search have contributed to the rise in violent crime. Labour, having had success with this argument in the election, are claiming that the reduction in police numbers because of funding cuts under the coalition have contributed to this spike, something which Rudd hotly denies.
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