LASHING’S BARBARIC BUT THEIR KIDS ARE SAFE ON THE STREETS

THE news that London-born Ye Ming Yuen will be flogged for drug offences, committed in Singapore, will rightly strike most people as archaic and barbaric. Alongside his 20-year prison sentence, the 29-yearold will be stripped, strapped to a wooden table, and beaten 24 times. Yesterday’s criticism by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is both welcome and justified. Such punishments belong in the dark ages.

Yet for all its unacceptable barbarity, it is nevertheless a sign of how seriously they take the issue of drug harm. It also exposes how weak and patchy our policy and enforcement is.

Indeed, the cold-blooded murder of Jayden Moodie, 14, was a reminder of the destruction and chaos permeating through our society.

The Mail on Sunday’s revelation that judges are giving teenagers convicted of dealing Class A drugs a ‘slap on the wrist’ rather than serious custodial sentences, has exposed a major failing – one that fuels the mayhem which is turning swathes of our country into a gangster’s paradise.

Young teenagers are being lured, then trapped, in gangs – and in some cases killed in cold blood on our streets.

It is utterly reprehensible that Singapore uses such an outdated physical punishment, yet it must be kept in mind that teenagers are not stabbed to death on the streets of Singapore.

Indeed, the city’s tough approach to crime and punishment has resulted in it being ranked as the second safest city in the world, after Tokyo.

And, in many other cities with clear attitudes to drugs policy, like Singapore, far fewer teenagers are murdered on their streets.

Other countries much closer to home, such as Sweden, show a zero tolerance approach focused on prevention and treatment, which we can learn from. And learn we must. Violent – and often drug- related – crime is back on the rise in the UK.

Much of London’s knife epidemic last year, which saw the murder rate in the capital rise to its highest level for a decade, was linked to a rise in drug gang feuds. It is estimated that gangs are responsible for as much as half of all knife crime with injury, 60 per cent of shootings, and 29 per cent of reported child sexual exploitation.

It is time that our approach to tackling violent crime changed. First, we need to sort out our policing. We must not be afraid to use ‘stop and search’ – however much controversy surrounds it.

It is true that concerns about racism are often quoted to discredit stop and search based on flawed and inflated statistics. But what should be of far greater concern to its critics is that young people aged 15–24 who are non-white are on average six times more likely to be fatally shot or stabbed than young people of the same age who were white. These are devastating statistics. Combined with intelligence-led, community-focused policing, stop and search is a powerful weapon in fighting the scourge of knife crime. And communities want it. Polling of Londoners by the Centre for Social Justice last summer found support for the power at over 90 per cent, holding at more than two thirds even in non-white communities.

But stop and search is not enough by itself. Our criminal justice system is one of the oldest and best in the world but it does not mean that we cannot improve significantly in the way that we deal with criminals.

While there should be little appetite to imitate the barbaric sentence in Singapore, we also know that many of the cautions and fines meted out for minor drug offences here do not help.

We must do more to reform what is often an ineffectual waste of time for courts, police, and offenders.

One such idea, currently being investigated by the Centre for Social Justice – which I helped set up – is a practice used in Sweden; where the offender is given the choice of taking the criminal route or the rehabilitation route.

For example, the use of a drug awareness course, akin to a speed awareness course. Those found with small amounts of cannabis would have to pay to spend time at an addiction treatment centre. It would give them a horrifying glimpse into the potential consequences of their actions. Vitally, we must get kids out of the clutches of gangs and into schools.

Lastly, and most importantly, we must go right back to the root cause of much of this problem and grasp the nettle on a most thorny issue: family breakdown.

For some reason, my colleagues in Parliament and the thinkers of Westminster are afraid to broach the issue of which Britain is world leading. Well, normal people aren’t. The scourge of fatherlessness underpins swathes of violent crime, as young men seek identity and belonging from gangs when they find none at home.

And then, of course, we must amend sentencing policy, so that our courts take the matter seriously.

We cannot continue with a situation where the police do their best to take criminals off our streets and yet are let down by the justice system handing out slaps on the wrist to serious offenders.

Until our courts start giving out sentences that reflect the severity of the crime committed, more young blood will continue to be spilt on our streets.

The brutal murder of Jayden last week highlights the crisis we face. Now is the time to act to take back control of our streets to save more young lives.