Regent's Park &
Kensington North
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Karen Buck MP Regent's Park & Kensington North |
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How do we overcome the brutality of knives?June 2006 How many panic buttons can be pressed by one series of news stories? Parent? Check. Parent of a boy on the edge of teenage-hood? Check. Parent of a child at a local, inner-city comprehensive? Check. Politician, only too aware of public concern at anti-social behaviour, violence and crime? Check again. Tragic recent deaths by stabbing include those of 15-year old schoolboy Kiyan Prince and concerned bystander, 19-year old student Tom Grant. These deaths have struck home in many more ways than one. Yet panic, or even fear, provides no solution to, or even understanding of, the problems we face, and we need understanding before we can reach the solutions. Remembering a childhood in the countryside, more years ago than I intend to share with readers of the ‘Wood and Vale’, I am suddenly and retrospectively conscious of how many of the boys I grew up with carried knives in their pockets. The mere existence of the penknife or Swiss Army knife is not the problem in itself, then, as generations of boy scouts would no doubt testify. Nor is it true to see the past as a sunlit upland of peace and harmony- from the vicious underworld of the Kray Brothers’ era to the gang culture portrayed so vividly by Graham Greene in his chilling novel ‘Brighton Rock’, Britain has always had its brutal underbelly. So do we have so much more cause for alarm now than we had then? Well, yes and no. No, because, despite the individual tragedies behind the headlines, we should not lose sight of the statistical likelihood of becoming a victim of violent crime, should not dismiss the downward trend of crime in the past decade and certainly should not fall into the trap of fearing and demonising our children and our schools. We do not detract from the horror and grief surrounding any individual crime by seeing it in a broader context, and by seeing the many signs of hope and of success in tackling the challenges we confront. Yet, on the other hand, we clearly do face some daunting challenges- some new, some manifestations of older realities. The global drugs trade continues to defy easy or glib solutions, and this fuels an alarming proportion of crime. So long as a lucrative market exists for illegal drugs, there will be a violent accompaniment. If the trade is not to be thwarted by legalisation (and I don’t see how it can be), then huge resources will need to be directed at reducing demand, improving treatment options and stemming supply. Gun crime is being borne down on hard, with some success, but also the added consequence that knives become a less risky alternative for a criminal to carry. Changes to the law now being contemplated by government may reduce the advantage within the criminal justice system, but the real deterrent lies in the chance of detection rather than the likely sentence if the knife carrier is charged. The introduction of neighbourhood policing across London and the overall increase in police numbers by this government will help enormously in this respect, but there will never be enough police to apprehend every potential criminal, nor would most of us wish to live in a society with the intense surveillance that would be required to achieve such an end. So alongside the extra police and a further tightening of the criminal justice system with regards to the carrying of concealed weapons, we need to delve deeper into the reasons why too many young people carry weapons in the first place: fear (of bullying- in schools and on the streets); bravado and a misplaced sense of masculinity; the need for an identity which can be defended or even asserted with aggression. Inner city schools and neighbourhoods are by no means the only ones facing up to these challenges, but they do have to cope with some exceptional demands- the instability that can accompany very high levels of population turnover and diversity; poverty and a high incidence of mental ill-health and drug addiction. That is why I welcome the work being done here in Westminster by organisations like ‘Working with Men’, organisations that operate at the grass roots with troubled young people or in communities under pressure, offering activities, mentoring and a chance to talk. ‘Working with men’, and other similar projects, are getting beneath the skin of the problem, and, ultimately, this is the only effective solution. We ask a great deal of our young people, and whilst many of them (though by no means all) have unprecedented access to material goods, they are growing up against a backdrop of equally unprecedented adult confusion and anxiety. It is not too late to respond to their deeper needs, but we must have, in turn, a deeper, fuller and more wide-ranging response than anything we have seen so far. |
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