Blaming the usual suspects won’t stop knife crime

More police officers and more stop-and-search will not fix the problem without other coherent action

Every life lost to knife crime is a terrible tragedy, but the victims and their families deserve more than the platitudes and politics we have seen this week. They deserve justice, and action to end the violence.

This is more than a moral panic. Last year, there were more fatal stabbings than at any time since records began. Knife crime is at its highest since 2011, before when we have no comparable data. Hospital admissions for stabbings – a measure more reliable than police recorded crime – are the highest in a decade.

In response, knees are jerking. Keen to increase their budgets again, the police demand more money and officers to fight back. Senior Conservatives, anticipating a leadership election, demand more stop-and-search. Others demand tougher prison sentences.

The problem is far more complex. Ten years or so ago, when hospital data showed knife crime was at its peak, so too were police officer numbers. Stop-and-search was used at around three times the current rate. And fewer knife criminals were given custodial sentences than today.

Of course, police numbers, police powers and prison make a difference, but none, and not even all three combined, will end the violence without other action. The Prime Minister’s poor communication skills let her down on Monday, but there was plenty more she could have said, other than deny a correlation between officer numbers and crime levels.

Police budgets are going up, and could increase by £970million next year. The police already employ as many people as they did as recently as 2003, when Britain was hardly the Wild West, and in several forces additional recruitment is under way. Officers, meanwhile, retain their ability to stop and search suspects.

Individual constables can search suspects where they have “reasonable grounds for suspecting [they] will find stolen or prohibited articles”. And if commanders believe there will be “serious violence” or people will carry “dangerous instruments or offensive weapons”, they can allow no-suspicion searches to be carried out in a fixed area for a fixed time.

These powers should be used intelligently, because the blanket use of stop-and-search is ineffective and counterproductive. If only one in 10 searches leads to an arrest, it can waste hundreds of thousands of hours of police time. If black people know they are being targeted unfairly, it undermines their confidence in the police.

And we know, in the past, hundreds of thousands of searches were carried out illegally every year. “Rarely,” says the police inspectorate, was stop-andsearch “based on an understanding of what works to cut crime”.

Used well, however, it can cut offences, and there is no legal impediment to the police making full use of their powers. In fact, stop-andsearch is on the increase again. In London, which accounts for more than one in three knife crimes in England and Wales, it increased by 65 per cent last year.

Even so, it is not well targeted. There is little correlation between where knife crimes are committed and where searches are conducted. In London boroughs that have experienced several fatal stabbings, like Ealing, Enfield and Greenwich, there are far fewer searches than elsewhere.

In Havering, where Jodie Chesney was killed last week, there were hardly any searches at all compared to other boroughs. Even now, most searches are for drugs, and fewer than one in five are for knives.

This brings us to the problem with the existing response to knife crime: the absence of a coherent strategy to defeat it.

The immediate response must come from the police themselves.

If the violence is fuelled by a glut of cheap cocaine, the National Crime Agency must work to reduce its supply. If gangs are behind the murders, community intelligence and rapid deployment is vital. If drug dealing is online, investigations must be modernised. If data and intelligence are needed from schools, hospitals and transport companies, things must be joined up. If increased patrols and more stop-and-search are required, so be it.

This will take better police leadership and better deployment of resources. In one city, for example, almost all officers are deployed in the middle of the day, while just four constables form the entire city’s response teams by night. And this is not a one-off: similar stories are told across the country.

In the long-term, prevention is the best cure. The solution will be found, as it was in cities like Boston in the US and Glasgow, in broader policy and partnerships. The police will need to work with families, community groups, schools, social workers and the NHS to turn youngsters away from violence. And we will need to give young people a bigger stake in the future, through education, training and employment.

It has been done before. We know it works. We just need our leaders to show a steady hand, and still their jerking knees.