Umunna says youth violence like a disease

Society should be ashamed by continuing bloodshed, Labour MP Chuka Umunna will say, as he calls for rising levels of youth violence to be treated like a disease.

In a speech lambasting the failure of criminalising teenagers to stop violence, the MP – a member of the government’s Serious Violence Taskforce – will call for the launch of a public health model.

He said treating knife crime like a disease instead of a crime has been used “very successfully” in Scotland to reduce stabbings.

But he will warn: “You cannot deliver that model without whole-system, cultural and organisational, change with sustained political backing.”

As a trustee of the 409 Project, a Brixton charity working with teens at risk of offending, he gave a speech in August 2007 lamenting the 17 London teenagers shot or stabbed to death that year.

“It was grim,” he said. “But here we are today, 11 years later, and already this year 21 teenagers have been stabbed in London alone.”

Mr Umunna will say too many young men feel “disrespected and disenfranchised” by a society that has turned its back on them.

He will urge “developing relationships where “dignity depends on an inherent sense of selfworth, not status symbols and the opinion of others”, as well as “helping them use their talent to find legitimate means of making money”.

The approach would dump top-down measures and “start from the inside and work outward” in community-led projects guided by a national framework.

MP Chuka Umunna