Another day, another teenager fatally stabbed on the streets of Britain. It’s a domestic issue crying out for urgency and action. It’s something the Home Secretary is reportedly losing sleep over – as are many parents, particularly in those communities most affected.
Today’s announcement of a new Knife Crime Prevention Order forms part of a welcome chain of action from the Home Secretary, but it lacks the knock-out blow required to change things on our increasingly violent streets.
In particular, it takes us no closer to addressing the fundamental issue that came from the huge collapse in stop and search: a significant minority of people who feel they can carry weapons without reasonable fear of detection.
While police forces do their best to increase and better explain stop and search – Merseyside’s Chief Constable perhaps most notably – other senior officers concede a reluctance and reticence on the part of a battle-weary frontline to do so, prompting, as in London, an increase in so-called ‘Section 60s’ (where senior police authorise officers to search anyone without any suspicion for a given time in a given area) and the creation of specialist taskforces made up of those officers ready, willing, and able to be proactive.
Meanwhile, around 15,000 people – 5,000 in London alone – were convicted last year of carrying a knife, gun, or drug trafficking thanks to the work of police. Many will have an already extensive collection of previous arrests and convictions. Some will be early in their criminal career. Others will be hardened gangsters, themselves grooming and exploiting children into careers of violence and crime.
Half walk free from court, fist bumping the air, with a smug grin, and often an expletive hurled back towards the court. But even for the other half who spend a short spell in prison, does it really do anything to effectively change their behaviour on release?
By the time someone has a second conviction and any real prospect of a prison sentence, their habit of carrying a weapon is already engrained. A short stint in our shamefully violent and drug-infested prisons will do little to encourage a less violent and fearful outlook.
But what if we fundamentally shifted the risks that inform decision-making among those who have been convicted of carrying weapons and drug trafficking?
We’ve called for such a measure in our report, It Can Be Stopped, calling it a Serious Violence Reduction Order, with three in four Londoners backing the proposal. It would require those most likely to possess a weapon after being sentenced, on contact with police, to prove to them they aren’t carrying one or be subjected to a search. It could and should be incorporated within the Offensive Weapons Bill.
The fist-pumps and grins from the gangsters walking out of court with another conviction and a community sentence would undoubtedly be more muted. The champagne enjoyed at the prison gate by the violent drug dealer or gang member collected by his crew after another generally ineffectual sentence for weapons or violence wouldn’t taste quite so good.
Crucially, it also gives young men and women trying to shake off a life of crime with a half decent reason to distance themselves from continued criminality, and reduce their value to anyone trying to criminally exploit them.
It would also signal to the police officers, parents, and citizens who bear witness to the trauma and carnage on our streets, that politicians and society understand their obligation to prevent crime, to make a difference, and to honour the social contract that some are quick to forget.
After the largest and most sustained collapse in stop and search since records began, the effect of such a targeted intervention on gangsters used to carrying and using weapons could be huge.
It will be decried by those who mean well but believe the greatest threat posed to young black men wear a police uniform and carry a warrant card because – based on objectively flawed statistics – they are six times more likely to be stopped and searched. Even as they pay little heed to the greater peril that our analysis found: being young and non-white means you are more than five times as likely to be fatally shot or stabbed on our streets.
These misguided voices must be recognised for what they are: a vocal group who receive disproportionate airtime and who are out of step with majority opinion, including among the black and ethnic minority populations they are often mistaken for representing.
Our own polling exposed the chasm between these voices and the public at large. We found just 7 per cent of non-white Londoners and 6 per cent of white Londoners opposed the idea.
Like so many of the social challenges within Britain today, virtue signalling, faux outrage, and picking the path of least resistance won’t solve them. So, at a time when politics can seem divided and devoid of majorities, this is one area that has huge support among the public and one the government should capitalise on.
Rory Geoghegan is Head of Criminal Justice at the Centre for Social Justice and is a former police officer.
Comments