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| How should the police respond to London's knife crime injury rise? | How should the police respond to London's knife crime injury rise? |
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| Knife crime has been moving up the news agenda in grim pursuit of London’s knife crime injury graph. Labour and Lib Dem AMs have drawn attention to a rise in the number of people under the age of 25 cut or stabbed. Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has echoed their concern. Boris Johnson has been accused of failing to honour a headline election pledge. The bleak sub culture of youth violence has been spotted overground and the authorities are composing their responses. Let’s observe. | Knife crime has been moving up the news agenda in grim pursuit of London’s knife crime injury graph. Labour and Lib Dem AMs have drawn attention to a rise in the number of people under the age of 25 cut or stabbed. Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has echoed their concern. Boris Johnson has been accused of failing to honour a headline election pledge. The bleak sub culture of youth violence has been spotted overground and the authorities are composing their responses. Let’s observe. |
| The numbers for the year to May 2015 were up from 1372 in the preceding twelve months to 1686: that’s 314 more knife crimes with injuries recorded, an increase of 23%. Note that these stats are for the victims of the crimes, not their perpetrators, and include all those aged 1-24. They mean it can’t be assumed they were all teenagers or young men or, for that matter, that their assailants were, though that’s undoubtedly the group most affected. Domestic violence victims are not included in the data set, which appears on the website of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) under gang crime. | The numbers for the year to May 2015 were up from 1372 in the preceding twelve months to 1686: that’s 314 more knife crimes with injuries recorded, an increase of 23%. Note that these stats are for the victims of the crimes, not their perpetrators, and include all those aged 1-24. They mean it can’t be assumed they were all teenagers or young men or, for that matter, that their assailants were, though that’s undoubtedly the group most affected. Domestic violence victims are not included in the data set, which appears on the website of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) under gang crime. |
| The figure is lower than for the year to May 2012 when it was 1747, so it’s valid to ask if we’re seeing a temporary increase or a sustained upward trend. Hogan-Howe was questioned about this at City Hall by AMs earlier this month. He felt that “targeted enforcement” had produced the fall in knife crime as a whole including those where injuries occurred, but that the Met now needed to refocus its efforts: it had begun concentrating on operations against the supply of drugs by London gangs to the Home Counties to the possible detriment of work against gang-related violence, and he felt there was a case for further refining stop-and-search which was producing more arrests while being used less frequently. | The figure is lower than for the year to May 2012 when it was 1747, so it’s valid to ask if we’re seeing a temporary increase or a sustained upward trend. Hogan-Howe was questioned about this at City Hall by AMs earlier this month. He felt that “targeted enforcement” had produced the fall in knife crime as a whole including those where injuries occurred, but that the Met now needed to refocus its efforts: it had begun concentrating on operations against the supply of drugs by London gangs to the Home Counties to the possible detriment of work against gang-related violence, and he felt there was a case for further refining stop-and-search which was producing more arrests while being used less frequently. |
| Conservative Kit Malthouse, who used to head MOPAC for Johnson and chaired its predecessor the Metropolitan Police Authority, wondered if the increase might be down to gang members coming out of jail following a “bump in activity, arrests and convictions during the early part of 2012” with the launch of the anti-gang command at the back end of 2011. Hogan-Howe was not sure there was clear evidence of this. He did, though, acknowledge “some concerns” that the enforcement of judicial restraint orders, such ASBOs and gang injunctions, had dipped. | Conservative Kit Malthouse, who used to head MOPAC for Johnson and chaired its predecessor the Metropolitan Police Authority, wondered if the increase might be down to gang members coming out of jail following a “bump in activity, arrests and convictions during the early part of 2012” with the launch of the anti-gang command at the back end of 2011. Hogan-Howe was not sure there was clear evidence of this. He did, though, acknowledge “some concerns” that the enforcement of judicial restraint orders, such ASBOs and gang injunctions, had dipped. |
| We’ll have to wait and see if the knife injury curve resumes its former downward trend. In the meantime, the mayor can expect to come under further pressure over the issue. You might think it unfair that Johnson is being punished for the actions of some of London’s more violent street criminals, but having profited politically from a spate of teenage fatalities during the 2008 mayoral election campaign - the one that brought him to power - by vowing to tackle the problem, it’s reasonable that he’s held to account. | We’ll have to wait and see if the knife injury curve resumes its former downward trend. In the meantime, the mayor can expect to come under further pressure over the issue. You might think it unfair that Johnson is being punished for the actions of some of London’s more violent street criminals, but having profited politically from a spate of teenage fatalities during the 2008 mayoral election campaign - the one that brought him to power - by vowing to tackle the problem, it’s reasonable that he’s held to account. |
| It’s also fair to remind him that his manifesto of that year asserted that large quantities of crime in general are never brought to the attention of the police. Lib Dem Caroline Pidgeon told the City Hall meeting that organisations working with young people in London, such as the Ben Kinsella Trust, are certain there is “a huge amount of knife crime and attacks going on that are completely unreported”, gang-linked or otherwise. Later, Hogan-Howe said: | It’s also fair to remind him that his manifesto of that year asserted that large quantities of crime in general are never brought to the attention of the police. Lib Dem Caroline Pidgeon told the City Hall meeting that organisations working with young people in London, such as the Ben Kinsella Trust, are certain there is “a huge amount of knife crime and attacks going on that are completely unreported”, gang-linked or otherwise. Later, Hogan-Howe said: |
| Our best chance of detecting this crime is when the victim tells us who did it or tells us at least the circumstances, describes the offender, says where it happened, etc. For this type of crime, sadly, too often young people seem to regard it as a badge of honour not to help the police and then get stabbed again later by the same offender...these kids need to be told, “You can do that if you like, but the bullies will come back. That is why we need you to help the criminal justice process.” | Our best chance of detecting this crime is when the victim tells us who did it or tells us at least the circumstances, describes the offender, says where it happened, etc. For this type of crime, sadly, too often young people seem to regard it as a badge of honour not to help the police and then get stabbed again later by the same offender...these kids need to be told, “You can do that if you like, but the bullies will come back. That is why we need you to help the criminal justice process.” |
| It was not a new insight, but it raised a question that is as pertinent as ever, and not only in relation to young offenders, knife crime and gangs. How do you increase help for the police among those Londoners whose help the police most need? | It was not a new insight, but it raised a question that is as pertinent as ever, and not only in relation to young offenders, knife crime and gangs. How do you increase help for the police among those Londoners whose help the police most need? |
| Update: June 17, 2015. Crime stats and their interpretation can be a tricky business. Mopac informs me that more than half of the increase in the figures for all violent crime in London - not just knife crime resulting in injury to under-25s - during the calendar year 2014 can be attributed to a change in its recording and classification procedures following concerns raised about these across England and Wales by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. This underlines how hard it can be to get a meaningful statistical picture. | |
| Meanwhile, the Evening Standard has published letters on knife crime from Green Party AM Jenny Jones and the Ben Kinsella Trust, urging the police and others to concentrate on early intervention strategies. Read the letters here. |