There is a national crisis on our streets
Two teenagers are dead after another weekend of knife violence. In a park in east London, 17-year-old Jodie Chesney was stabbed to death in what police have called an unprovoked attack. In Manchester, two youths have been arrested after Yousef Makki, a private schoolboy aged 17, was killed. We do not yet know the full details behind these appalling events or the motivation, but they fit with an all-too-depressing pattern that has been apparent for some time. Victims are getting younger and the injuries inflicted are getting worse. In some parts of our major cities it has become routine for children to carry knives on the streets either to attack others or because they fear for their own safety.
A propensity to violence has always existed among young men but has historically been ameliorated by a range of social conventions and restrictions on behaviour that no longer apply. Gangs, especially in London, operate with impunity. The police complain they do not have the wherewithal to carry out all the various functions expected of them, including the role of glorified social workers.
If the political classes were not so preoccupied with Brexit almost to exclusion of everything else, what is happening on our streets would be considered a national crisis and dealt with as such. The Home Office says it has implemented a “step change” in policy through its serious violence strategy but it does not seem to be working. It has some merit, including early intervention and efforts to revive the youth clubs that once existed to give youngsters something to do. But in the end it is the enforcement of law and order that matters. Ministers continue to insist there is no correlation between police numbers and rising violent crime but this line of argument is untenable and cannot be sustained in the face of the evidence.
Ministers may be right to say that there are enough officers who could be deployed to frontline crime duties, but this requires politicians to stop loading politically fashionable responsibilities on to the police, like investigating “transphobic” Twitter comments. There needs to be an urgent and wide-ranging reappraisal of the way we police our streets and communities to ensure order is maintained and young people feel safe and secure, whether that is on their way to and from school or, as in the tragic case of Jodie Chesney, merely sitting in a park with friends.