Prince Charles and Harry team up to tackle knife crime epidemic

Duke of Sussex will join father at Clarence House conference aimed at tackling youth violence

THE Prince of Wales is to team up with the Duke of Sussex to attempt to tackle the scourge of knife crime, as father and son combine experience with star power to combat youth violence.

The Prince and Duke, who have this year drawn closer together professionally, will attend a joint round table meeting hosted by The Prince’s Trust in a conversation aimed at untangling the difficult issue of violent crime among young people.

It is a further sign of the pair’s increasing team work, with the long experience of the Prince matched by the current ability of the Duke to connect with young people.

The Duke has twice this year delivered speeches in praise of his father: once at a Buckingham Palace garden party and again in Australia. They have previously found a common connection over the issues of conservation and the environment.

The Duke has recently conducted private meetings about tackling knife crime, saying he hoped to focus on his further at the Royal Foundation.

The Prince’s Trust has now also turned its sights to the problem, with a discussion covering topics from role models to giving young people something else to do.

The event, at Clarence House, will include victims of violent crime, community leaders, a Pride of Britain winner and those investigating how to make better use of social media. Among them will be Omar Sharif, who rose from gang violence and homelessness to run his own successful personal fitness business.

Topics on the agenda for the event include using social media to amplify inspiring voices; how role models can influence behaviour; how to engage young people in alternative activities; and giving young people a greater stake in the economy and society.

Harry last month attended a discussion on youth violence in London, co-facilitated by young people from MAC UK, a mental health charity for excluded young people. The step up in their work comes as pressure continues to mount on politicians to act after a year of grim knife attacks in London.

Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, recently admitted it would take a long time to tackle the 180 gangs that are “busy” dragging children into crime.

So far this year in London there have been 123 homicides, more than the 118 in the whole of last year, not including the victims of terrorist attacks.

Ms Dick told LBC that after three years of gun and knife crime increasing, the rate is now starting to level off and come down.

Surging levels of violent crime among young people prompted the Prince’s Trust to turn its attention to helping disadvantaged and vulnerable children in cities. The Trust was set up in 1976 in response to social unrest and high levels of youth unemployment.

The organisation’s business start-up programme began in 1983 following conversations with young people in the aftermath of the Brixton and Toxteth riots.

Both Harry and the Duchess of Sussex have indicated that a key focus of their work will be helping young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Their first engagement saw them meet with mentors from the Full Effect programme in Nottingham, set up by the Royal Foundation to tackle youth violence. That was followed by a visit to Reprezent Radio, a station in Brixton, south London, that established itself in response to a previous spike in knife crime.

Harry, who is the The Queen’s Commonwealth Youth Ambassador, said in April: “The young adults I have met across the Commonwealth have shown me time and again that your generation understands something very important: that to tackle a big challenge, you need to focus on the root causes, not the symptoms – something my father has believed for years, yet something society still struggles with.”

Charles’s involvement in a cause close to Harry’s heart suggests a closer bond between the heir to the throne and the new royal couple. In May, Charles walked Meghan down the aisle when she married Harry in Windsor, as her own father was unable to attend for medical reasons.

‘Young adults understand that to tackle a big challenge you need to focus on the root causes, not the symptoms’